


is it the right word?

by strangetowns



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst (like so much angst I can't even), Consent Issues (Bodily Autonomy), M/M, Organ Transplantation, Slurs, Swearing, Vaguely Implied Sexual Situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 78,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're going to the ocean someday."<br/>-<br/>An AU loosely based on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I - To The Cottages

**Author's Note:**

> This is an alternate universe loosely based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go [alternatively: the most niche thing I’ve ever written in my life]. Though the premise is taken from this book, I have done my best to ensure that you will not need to have read it to understand this fic. However, I do recommend giving the book a spin if you haven’t already, as it is an excellent read and much better than this fic will ever be.
> 
> IITRW has been over a year in the making. Endless thanks to [Lydia](http://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/), without whom this would not have been possible. I cannot express how grateful I am for your assistance, not just for reading this over as many times as you have in all its various forms but also for listening to my incoherent rambling and providing me with invaluable insight and ideas. This fic truly would not be the same without your help.
> 
> Much thanks as well to [rumpelsnorcack](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rumpelsnorcack/pseuds/rumpelsnorcack) and [niuniujiaojiao](http://niuniujiaojiao.tumblr.com/) [to whom I extend a special shoutout for taking the time to make me beautiful companion gifsets over on tumblr and allowing me to repost them] for your time, insight, and answers to my endless questions. I can’t believe there are people willing to read my work over multiple times [and be infinitely helpful every time!], but you guys are truly incredible.
> 
> The title of this fic is taken from Sufjan Steven's "[Majesty Snowbird](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxiWj4Af6II)”. Parts will be posted as I finish editing them. And finally, **please mind the warnings/tags**. I do not use them lightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [niuniujiaojiao](http://niuniujiaojiao.tumblr.com) for this [lovely companion gifset](http://douchenuts.tumblr.com/post/146222982612/is-it-the-right-word-were-going-to-the-ocean).

**[Part I – To the Cottages](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99NB7f084r8) **

_“… memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”_

-

Balthazar couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a proper meal in his own flat.

This was mostly due to the fact that he had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with mornings and a tendency to work long hours without quite realizing it, a combination which often yielded mildly catastrophic results when it came to the issue of “proper meals”. Not world-ending – he’d been living on his own for long enough that he’d also picked up a good knack for improvisation – but certainly inconveniences for just about anyone else.

Balthazar, on his part, didn’t really see anything inconvenient about wolfing down a piece of toast on the way to work, or heating up someone else’s leftovers to eat while sitting on a chair with a straight back. He didn’t care much for fine dining, and never had. Besides, the less time he spent eating, the more he could devote to what actually _mattered_.

These were the thoughts that flashed through his head when Maria, the woman who frequently manned the Messina Recovery Center’s front desk, looked him over and said, not unkindly, “You really ought to eat something a bit more substantial than a stale muffin, Balthazar.”

He blinked and looked down at the pastry in his hand, all lumpy and discolored under the harsh overhead lighting. She had, he could acknowledge begrudgingly, a point. “Was all I could find in my cupboard this morning.”

Maria shook her head. “Of course it was.” She turned back to the clipboard in her hand. “New donor for you this morning, are you excited?”

Balthazar shrugged. “Sure? They let me pick this time around so, I mean, not that much of a surprise.”

“What does it take to impress you around here?” Maria teased, lips turned up in amusement.

“Nothing will ever impress me. I am absolutely unimpressible.”

“Of course you are,” Maria replied with the fondness of someone who had encountered him enough times to know when he was attempting – and most likely failing – to be witty. Not, admittedly, that it would take that many times to figure that one out. “Room 225. And get a salad from the canteen or something, will you?”

“Thanks, Maria,” Balthazar said, tucking the paperwork she handed him under his arm. “No promises, though.”

Getting to Room 225 required a climb up a particularly narrow flight of stairs and a handful of hastily made apologies to people that he almost ran into. He couldn’t help his eagerness. His last donor hadn’t had an easy time of his operations, not through any of them. After all was said and done, Balthazar had to take a few days off before he declared that he was ready for another assignment. And now he was. He really was ready to get back to the job. He was itching for it, really. He could only take so much of his own company, these days.

Some might wonder, of course, if a carer that needed time off after a donor’s completion really was fit to come back to the job. Maybe the carer in question was getting too invested. Maybe they had just become too weak. Not that anyone had expressed such doubts to Balthazar himself, but he could imagine the conversations that administration, or whoever really supervised this whole operation, had behind closed doors. If they did bother asking him, all he could say, really, was that he was good at what he did, and that was all there was to it.

Then again, on the front of “too much investment”, Balthazar supposed he wasn’t entirely blameless. One of the first rules they taught you about being a carer was that usually, hardly anyone was to blame for rough patches. Balthazar, though, had never paid much heed to that rule. He had a responsibility to his donors to do his best, and often doing his best involved getting more emotionally involved than he was required to be. The connection, he’d found, made the job easier. And, surely, administration couldn’t find much to complain about with the quality of his results.

But it was hard, at times. After all these years of doing the job, it was still hard.

Perhaps therein lay the appeal of the opportunity to care for his new patient. For one, “new” did not necessarily mean she was a stranger. He knew her rather well, actually, or at least he once did, many years ago. And though they had not spoken in that long, that connection, that elusive thing he sought after with all of his patients, was already established. Years of distance, after all, were not enough to make him forget a name like hers.

With that in mind, he arrived at 225, and, with a deep breath, opened the door.

Immediately he caught sight of her. She was lying in bed with a book in her hands, and when he entered, her eyes flew to his.

“Ursula,” he said, and he couldn’t help it; his face split into a grin.

“Balthazar!” Her hair was a bit shorter than the last time they’d seen each other, and he couldn’t ignore the fact that she was wearing a hospital gown in place of actual clothes, but her eyes were the same color they’d always been, and when he looked into them he could almost taste hot chocolate drunk from dusty mugs in the back of his throat.

He pulled a chair up next to the bed. “You look rather well,” he said.

“Always the smooth talker,” Ursula replied with a wry twist of her lips.

“How was the first operation? I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”

“Not at all!” Ursula beamed, setting the book down in her lap. “Went better than expected, actually. The doctor almost seemed surprised. A bit of an insult to injury, but whatever. Still, I’m supposed to stay in bed for at least another few days. Who am I to disobey? And I guess I’d also have you to answer to. Don’t look at me like that, I did this for almost as long as you have, you know.”

Balthazar smiled. “I know.” His gaze flickered to the book she had been reading. “What are you – “

“Nothing new. An old favorite.” He looked closer and, sure enough, he could just make out faded letters spelling _The Great Gatsby_ across the cover. “I miss my copy from the Cottages.”

The Cottages. Scratchy blankets, crackling static on a television screen. His fingers twitched.

“It’s been a while,” he said. A while was probably an understatement. A while, really, meant nine years. It had been almost a decade since she’d had her books at the Cottages. Almost a decade since they had last spoken to each other.

Did a number like that tear at the space between them? Or could they carry on like they once did, picking up right where they left off? It was almost too much to hope for.

 “If you keep talking like that,” Ursula said, “you’re going to make me feel old.”

The comment pulled a laugh from somewhere deep inside his gut, unexpectedly, and he found himself smiling again. Things were different, certainly. They were different people now, and he didn’t know how different, but they could joke, and they could smile at each other. It was more than he’d gotten in the past, at least at the beginning of things – journeys, other carers sometimes liked to say, though he’d always thought the term a touch sentimental – like this.

“Us, grow old?” Balthazar said. He could feel the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “Never.”

She smiled back. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?”

“We’ve certainly enough time,” he said. “You haven’t even gotten the notice for your next donation, yeah?”

Ursula shook her head. “I mean, where do we even start?” She tapped her fingers against her leg in thought, chewing her lip. “I guess I ought to ask… Well, I haven’t been the best at, um, keeping up with everyone we knew back then.”

Balthazar blinked in surprise, though on some level he supposed it was always easiest to begin on common ground. “Yeah? Did you keep up with anyone at all?”

“Meg and Hero,” Ursula said. “Though they were the only ones, really, and those cases I happened across more out of luck than anything. Do you…”

“As far as I know, we’re the last ones,” he said.

“Oh.” She didn’t seem shocked at the news. In fact, she almost seemed grimly satisfied, as if her suspicions were confirmed. “Even…?”

“Yeah.”

There was silence, for a few heartbeats. They’d both existed for long enough to know how little meaning apologies really carried, but Balthazar felt the words anyway, thrumming in his bones. He couldn’t quite tell who, between the two of them, wanted to say them more.

“I, uh…” Balthazar got up from his chair and walked to the window. “Let’s get some light in here, shall we?” He opened the blinds, and pale light filtered in between the slats. He’d had some half-formed intention of refreshing the atmosphere of the room, but the clouds were low-hanging outside, and the veiled light bleached the room of its color.

“So what all have you been up to these last years?” Ursula said. He turned around, and she leveled him with a steady, carefully curious gaze.

“Oh,” he said. “You know. Probably not much different from things you’ve been doing. I have my own flat now. And a car. I can drive. Or something. You know how it is.”

“You forgot to mention you’re so good at your job you can pick your own donors now.” Ursula’s smile was almost sly.

He shrugged in response. “Yeah, sure, they let me pick every now and then. Most of the time I don’t take them up on it, though.”

“You only pick if you know there’s one of us.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“You’re right. I know how that is.” Carefully, she set the book on the bedside table. “I never got to pick myself. But I did get to care for two of us, and that was two more than I could have expected. It was extraordinarily lucky.”

Meg and Hero. Balthazar could fill in the blanks on his own. He couldn’t help but wonder who came first, even as he knew how unfair that thought was.

“I used to get a lot of assignments at once,” Balthazar said, coming over to sit down again. “I’d be driving all over the country, rotating my days, timing it strategically.” He shook his head with a laugh. “But they’re slowing down, aren’t they? Some days, I can’t decide if it’s because they want to use carers less or they want to use _me_ less. The demand for us hasn’t gone down, that’s for sure.”

“I wouldn’t worry so much about that,” Ursula said. “They know what they’re doing.”

“I’m sure.” Balthazar realized, then, that Ursula probably hadn’t had anything to eat as of yet. Some carer _he_ was. “You haven’t had breakfast yet, have you? I’m sure the nurses will be by soon, but, uh, I’ve had donors in this center before. I ought to get you something that, you know, actually tastes good.”

“Well, how can I say no to that?” Ursula said, smiling.

“Plain bagel with cream cheese, then?”

“What a charmer,” Ursula said, pressing a hand to her chest. “He knows me so well.”

Balthazar rolled his eyes as he made for the door. Some things, at least, hadn’t changed.

“Hey.”

He paused, his hand on the doorknob, and looked back at Ursula. “Yeah?”

“We should talk about the Cottages. When you come back.” She smiled slightly, glancing away. “It didn’t occur to me how much I’d missed them until I saw you again.”

He could understand that. He felt that, too.

“Of course,” he said, inclining his head. As soon as he turned away, though, he could feel his pulse picking up, just a few clicks. It was irrational, of course, but at the same time, it made all the sense in the world that he’d feel that way.

The Cottages. It had been a long time since he’d properly thought about them.

-

When Balthazar moved to the Cottages, about a month or two after he’d turned sixteen, it was with silence and low expectations.

There were five others from the Fields, at the time. He knew their names, but not much else about most of them. They drove to the Cottages in an old, rickety minibus from the Fields, along with their worn, patched-up bags and a handful of students picked up from other schools. The journey was fairly quiet, low voices and the occasional peal of laughter piercing the air. Balthazar spent most of it resting his forehead against the cool window glass, pretending to be asleep, and counting the fields that passed slowly by.

The bus ground to a halt in front of a decently sized farmhouse with dark windows and a sloping roof, opened its doors, and drove away as soon as all of its passengers were off, thick black smoke billowing in its wake. Everyone seemed to naturally gravitate toward those from their own schools, and Balthazar was no different. This was the first time any of them had come close to being in the “outside world”, and even if it was a concept they’d talked about a lot back at the Fields it just made sense to stick to what you were used to.

Shortly after they got off the bus, it began to rain. Not enough precipitation to qualify the weather as properly rainy, but certainly more substantial than a light mist. It seemed rather appropriate, in-between weather for a day Balthazar felt in-between about.

As people around him started up uncertain conversation, some laughing nervously, he took in their surroundings. There was a varied assortment of buildings scattered about the land for a ways in either direction, with no semblance of arrangement other than they seemed to be circled loosely around the farmhouse and no commonality other than they all looked like they could benefit from some significant repairs. The land itself sloped in odd ways, a distortion of what hills should look like. It was probably fortunate that they’d gotten there when summer was just starting to pick up momentum, when the grass was tall and green and the buildings still looked friendly. They could get used to the place when it still resembled something like beauty. He wondered how cold it got, during the winter months.

Satisfied that he had observed all there was to see, he turned back to the nearby circle of Fields students. Beatrice D and Ben H were arguing, unsurprisingly. No one else seemed to want to join in – another inevitability. Meg W and Ursula N talked quietly to each other, ignoring the proceedings. Pedro D looked unsure as to whether he should intervene, or whether it was even worth it.

“So what, you just want to stand around here in the rain until something happens?” Beatrice was saying, gesticulating wildly. “Great plan, Ben. Definitely my idea of a fun afternoon.”

“Okay, first of all, it’s not _raining_ ,” Ben said. “It’s drizzling.”

“Oh, pardon me for mixing up my vocabulary, clearly it’s incredibly important that we get weather terminology right.”

“Second, they _can’t_ just let us stand around here. That’s just – that’s just not how it works. I’d wager that guy – ” Here, Ben jabbed his finger toward an old man who seemed to be intently working on fixing something on the side of one of the buildings. “ – will tell us where to go any minute now.”

Everyone turned their heads toward the old man, who seemed to be making an active effort to ignore the crowd.

“I doubt it.” Beatrice pursed her lips. “Okay. If no one else wants to, then I will.” She spun on her heels and walked up to the front door of the farmhouse.

“Whoa, hold on – “ Pedro called out, holding his hands up.

“Make me,” Beatrice yelled over her shoulder, and held up a fist to knock on the door right as it swung open.

“Oh.” The young man who had opened the door seemed startled to find Beatrice standing there.

“Uh…” Beatrice stepped aside and turned back to the group, a bewildered expression on her face.

“I assume you lot were getting impatient, then?” The man said in a tone that suggested he had regained his composure. “Sorry for leaving you out here for so long. Why don’t you all come inside, and we can get you properly settled? Name’s Leo, for future reference. I’m sure you’ll meet the others soon enough.”

The older residents of the Cottages had clearly shed the title of ‘students’ long ago, if they’d had it at all. Balthazar wasn’t sure what to call them, wasn’t sure about anything regarding them, except for their unassuming kindness and propensity for privacy. As Leo and his friends directed them to their new rooms, they passed whole corridors of closed doors, and he wondered what each of them hid behind them.

It wasn’t long before Balthazar and the others were deposited in their rooms, sagging bags at their feet. When they were satisfied that all of the new residents were situated, the older ones quietly left, leaving behind only a reminder that they could come back to the farmhouse whenever they felt like it.

Balthazar’s room was on the top floor of a stable that had been converted into a block of living quarters large enough to house six people. It was poorly lit and had a curiously musty smell he suspected would be difficult to get rid of, but the ceiling slanted in a way he quite liked, and he couldn’t deny that after spending his whole existence sharing cramped rooms – and, basically, everything – with other students, it was good to have something to himself, no matter how small. He didn’t have much to make it his own – he barely had enough clothes in his bag to fit one of the drawers in the dresser, let alone anything else for the rest of the place – but someone had hung a colorful tapestry on the walls, and the window offered a welcoming view of the tilted hills. There was a small cassette player perched on a stool in the corner. Already, he was coming to think of the place as his, and the feeling of it tingled in his very fingertips.

Someone knocked on his door. He turned around just in time for Pedro to walk in.

“Mind if I hang out here for a bit?” Pedro said, but before Balthazar could answer he sat down on the bed. Not that Pedro would have to wait for an answer. He probably knew it already.

Balthazar finished putting his clothes into the dresser and came over to the bed, sitting next to Pedro.

“So,” Pedro said, “what do you think?”

Balthazar shrugged carefully. “You?”

“Well, the only kitchen on the grounds is in the farmhouse, which is pretty far away,” Pedro said. “But the scenery is nice to look at.”

“Of course you’d say that. No more midnight snacks for you, you poor soul.”

Pedro laughed. It sounded more like a collection of sighs. “I miss the Fields.”

Balthazar shrugged again. He did too, he supposed, more in the sense that the Fields was all he’d ever known than in the sense that there was actually anything to miss about it. He wasn’t the kind of person to get attached to people or places like that. Maybe in exceptional cases, but certainly not in the Fields’.

Pedro, though, he was different. Pedro was the kind of person to call a place like the Fields ‘home’, the kind of person to have best friends and special places with special memories. The kind of person who needed that, and who had the capabilities of finding it even at a place like the Fields. Balthazar understood just how important sentimental value was to Pedro, just as he understood how important it wasn’t to him.

“We’ve been gone for a few hours,” Balthazar said lightly.

Pedro shrugged. “So?”

He could tell, as nonchalantly as Pedro was acting, that this was something that had been on his mind for a while. “I guess we’ll just have to make the best of it,” Balthazar said. “You’re friends with me, aren’t you? And Bea and Ben, too. You’re not alone.”

Pedro smiled, then, the kind of smile that crept onto your face and stayed there. It wasn’t the kind of expression you forgot easily.

“Leo said there’s a piano in the farmhouse,” he said.

“Really?” His heartbeat picked up a little. He wondered how old the thing was, how the keys would feel under his fingers. He wondered if it would feel as good to play the piano in an unfamiliar place as it did in a room he’d always known.

“It’ll be good here, I think,” Pedro said, leaning back on his hands. “Still. It won’t be the same.”

“Is that so bad?” Balthazar said quietly.

Pedro shrugged. “I don’t know.” He smiled again. “I like the people here.”

“You would,” Balthazar said. It was only a matter of time, he figured, before Pedro had more friends than the rest of them.

“What, and you don’t?” Pedro said, pretending to be offended.

“I dunno,” Balthazar said. “I don’t know any of them, do I? I suppose I like the ones I do know.”

“Oh yeah?” Pedro said, face splitting into a grin.

“Obviously.”

“That’s me, right?”

“Now, don’t get too cocky. I could be talking about anyone.”

Pedro scoffed, pushing at Balthazar’s shoulder with his own. “ _Rude_.”

Balthazar laughed. “Course I meant you. Who else?”

Pedro smiled in answer, one of those you could tell he was fighting back and failing miserably. He didn’t say anything, though, and they were quiet for an amiable moment. Balthazar was content to let the silence settle for a bit. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Pedro casting his gaze about the room, taking in their surroundings.

“Not fair,” Pedro complained. “I don’t have a pretty wall thing, or a cassette player. How come you get both?”

“What would you do with a cassette player?” Balthazar teased.

“What would _you_ do with a cassette player?” Pedro countered.

“Oho. First-class comeback, that is.”

“I’m brilliant. Don’t even test me.”

Balthazar holds his hands up, grinning. “Sorry, mate.”

Pedro stuck his tongue out at him. “Ugh, I should probably get back to unpacking.” He groaned, letting himself fall back on Balthazar’s bed. “I don’t want to. If I don’t unpack, I can pretend I don’t have to.”

Balthazar poked Pedro in the ribs. “You don’t even have that much stuff.”

Pedro clutched his side and moaned dramatically. “Oh. Oh, I’ve been mortally wounded. Look what you’ve done, Balthazar. I shall never recover.”

Balthazar resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You know, as much as I appreciate you making yourself at home in my bed, you really ought to go finish up.”

Pedro stopped writhing around on the bed and grinned lopsidedly at Balthazar. “Ought I?”

“Yeah.” Balthazar nudged Pedro’s foot with his own. “How am I supposed to see what your room looks like if you don’t finish unpacking?”

Pedro sat up. “Oh, that’s right. You need to come see my room. Though I still maintain yours is way better.”

“Are you suggesting we make a trade, Pedro D?” Balthazar raised his eyebrows. “I know your ways, mate. The answer is no, by the way.”

Pedro sighed. “Let the record show that I tried.” He got up and walked to the door. Before he left, he turned back one last time. “Come visit my room after dinner, okay?”

“Sure,” Balthazar answered, but by the time he said the word Pedro was already gone. It figured. Why would Pedro need to wait for an answer he already knew?

Balthazar leaned back on his pillows and stared at the ceiling. He thought briefly about what Pedro had said earlier, about things not being the same. He wondered what it would be like if they did stay the same, and what it would be like if they didn’t. He wondered which he wanted more. That was a question he didn’t have the answer to.

He felt fortunate, at least, to be housed with the others from the Fields. Even if he didn’t know many of them too well, it was harder to feel uncomfortable in new surroundings when he still had reminders of the Fields, the good parts anyway, somewhere around him.

Dinner – and every other meal, as Balthazar understood it – was served in the farmhouse. Still suffering from a bout of uncertainty, the residents of his house huddled together and made the walk over. Everyone grouped themselves into pairs, Ben and Beatrice squabbling over something Balthazar paid little attention to, Meg and Ursula laughing quietly over some private joke. Pedro walked next to Balthazar with his hands in his pockets, silently.

Things that would stay the same. Things he wouldn’t mind changing.

“What’re you looking all thoughtful for?” Balthazar said, knocking his shoulder into Pedro’s.

Pedro rolled his eyes. “Shove off, honestly.” He squinted at the sky. “Just glad it stopped raining.”

“What’s wrong with rainy weather?” Balthazar said teasingly.

“Nothing.” Pedro shrugged. “Just not my type.”

They got to the farmhouse, then, and Balthazar didn’t have the time to wonder what Pedro meant. Dinner was good, and the tea was better. He liked living at the Cottages already.

-

“I think that’s what I miss most about the Cottages,” Ursula said. “The tea.”

Balthazar looked down at the foam cup in his hand, half full with murky liquid that had already cooled down a few degrees. “It was really quite top notch, wasn’t it? No complaints in that department.”

“Plenty of complaints in other departments, though.” Ursula began spreading cream cheese on her bagel. “The constant rain. The horrible insulation. The chill. The endless chores.”

“You make it sound so dramatic,” Balthazar said. “The chores kept us busy. They were good for us. And we learned to deal with everything else, didn’t we?”

“Only because we had to,” Ursula said.

“Yeah.” Balthazar got up from his seat and tossed his unfinished cup of tea into the bin. “Only because we had to.”

“When do you leave again?”

Balthazar glanced at his watch. “Half an hour. The center my next donor’s at is a bit of a long drive from here.”

“Thirty minutes.” Ursula settled back into her pillows with a sigh, closing her eyes.

They sat in silence for a while. It felt different from the silences they used to share before. Serious? More reflective? Balthazar didn’t know why he was surprised at the revelation. He had done this before, reconnected with someone he hadn’t seen in years, and so he should know by now what it was like. Still, there was something a bit stilted in the air, something he knew they both felt. He didn’t know if it would ever go away.

“I liked the chill,” Balthazar said quietly.

Ursula sighed again, a soft exhale of breath, and opened her eyes. “Yeah?”

“And I miss the Cottages. After everything… well, I guess I shouldn’t. It’s been so long, after all. But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

Ursula leaned back, looking at him appraisingly. But she knew better than to ask questions Balthazar couldn’t answer.

“I miss it more than the Fields, anyway,” he amended quickly, trying to turn the conversation somewhere more lighthearted. Somehow, though, the attempt didn’t work. Memories of the Fields brought up sourness for the both of them.

“There are things to miss about the Fields,” Ursula said carefully. “It’s practically the place we came from, isn’t it?”

Things to miss about the Fields. He could understand that, actually. As much as he did not like to remember the dirty halls and the broken down bathrooms, the weary meanness of the handlers and how there never seemed to be enough food for anyone, there were still things to miss about it, people and memories that might even be worth remembering, if remembering was something he believed in. Maybe that was true of any place once you’d lived there long enough for it to become part of who you were, so thorough sometimes he could feel the air of the Fields in his lungs, the feeling of it pulsing in his veins.

“If we came from anywhere, I guess,” he said out loud. He’d never really been able to answer that question, nor had he ever wanted to.

-

Pedro was Balthazar’s first real friend, not the other way around.

Not to say, of course, that he hadn’t known or been friendly with other people in their year. He had memories of playing with a variety of individuals when they’d been very young. But he hadn’t had a steady person to share toys with, or stories, or secrets. He hadn’t particularly needed one, if he was going to be honest. But maybe he’d wanted one anyway. There was no way to know what he wanted, back then.

It was, for one, a time when he went by a different name. Stanley J. He’d never felt a strong connection to it, like most of his early memories and possessions. In fact, he hadn’t even liked it all that much. If he wasn’t going to feel like he owned his own name, it might as well be something he liked, right? So even though others didn’t called him Balthazar until later, he’d picked the name up from a story he’d read somewhere, and he’d liked the way it sounded in his head, and that was what he called himself when no one else was around.

It was difficult to recall the exact circumstances under which he and Pedro properly met, but he did have a general idea of how it happened. He’d been around the age of seven or eight, and if he remembered properly he’d been sitting on the peripheral of the playing field, trying to remember the lyrics to a song he’d heard on the radio.

He’d been so wrapped up in what he was doing that he didn’t notice he’d accumulated a small audience until he faltered on a line; now, he couldn’t possibly remember what the words had been, but he did recall that when he stumbled, someone to his side finished it off for him.

He stopped singing, suddenly abashed. Facing him were two boys. The one standing closer to him had a shock of blond hair and a friendly smile. Here, presumably, was the source of the voice. Balthazar knew him well enough to know that his name was Peter D, but other than that, he hadn’t really spoken with him all that much. The other boy, who was hiding behind Peter rather shyly, all tan-faced and skinny elbows, was completely unfamiliar. When he caught Balthazar’s eye, he smiled cautiously.

“Hello,” Balthazar said. It seemed like a safe word to say.

“Hi,” Peter said. “You have a good voice.”

“Um, thanks.”

“Hey, what’s your name again? We’re in the same year, right?”

Balthazar told him his name – mumbled it under his breath, really – and returned the question.

“I’m Peter D,” Peter said, smiling, “and this is John D. My brother. He’s in the year below us.”

It wasn’t common for people from different years to be friends with each other, let alone be close enough to call each other by some term of endearment they had no real concept of, but at that age, you kind of just accepted that sort of claim in stride. Balthazar especially was not the kind of person who was fond of questions.

“I’m not your brother, Peter,” John said, his nose wrinkling. “Do you even know what brothers are?”

“Sure I do,” Peter answered cheerfully. “Brothers have each other’s backs, always. I have your back, and you have mine, right? So we’re brothers.”

Balthazar wasn’t sure if that definition was quite right, and he was definitely not sure if they could even have brothers. But he decided he liked the way Peter had defined it, and the way he talked in general.

“Can I be your brother?” he asked tentatively, feeling out the strange word in his mouth.

“Sorry,” Peter said, with real regret. “You’re only allowed to have one brother.” His face brightened. “But you can be my friend, if you want.”

Balthazar pretended to think about it. “I’d like that,” he said, ignoring the fact that he had never felt that way about anyone else before.

“Okay, so as my friend, I have to tell you a secret.” Peter scooted toward him, leaning in. His voice turned into a conspiratorial whisper. “Are you ready?”

Balthazar nodded.

“We’re going to go to the ocean one day, John and me,” Peter said. “As my friend, you can come too. You should. Why would you say no to the ocean?”

“I can’t say no to the ocean,” Balthazar said. He didn’t think about what going to the ocean meant, in the future or then. It sounded so nice to go to the ocean one day, a place that seemed as far away from the Fields as you could be. He didn’t know how far away it was, but it was a long way away from here, and that was enough.

So that was the beginning. As far as beginnings went, it honestly wasn’t all that exciting, and beyond the vague outlines of the conversation there was hardly anything else that made it special. One would think that the formation of two of his most cherished relationships would come with a grand fanfare, explosions perhaps, maybe even fireworks. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was more like something that had just happened to him, like how living at the Fields had happened to him – a fundamental truth of his existence, something that had been around for so long he could hardly remember how it had gotten there. Something he hadn’t exactly asked for, but something he would never even think about questioning.

Beyond that first meeting, the most significant event of the beginning of their friendship happened a little while after. It was unclear to Balthazar whether they had interacted a lot in that period of time, but he had the impression that their first encounter hadn’t initially changed much between them.

Even so, on the day that Balthazar could recall, they were in class maybe ten or fifteen minutes before it was supposed to start, and they were talking. He couldn’t quite remember how it had started, but he knew that soon enough, the topic of his name came up.

“Do you like your name, Stanley?” Peter said.

Balthazar paused. “Why do you ask?”

“You act kind of weird whenever I use it. Like now, see? You made this face.”

“I did not make that face.”

“How do _you_ know?”

Balthazar gave in. “I guess you have a point.”

Peter scratched the side of his head. “Why?”

“It just doesn’t feel right.”

“So what does feel right?”

“I don’t know,” Balthazar said, even though he did. He was starting to get mildly irritated by all the questions.

“Sure you do. Like a… like a nickname, see?” Peter leaned in, holding his hand next to his mouth and whispering the next part conspiratorially. “I’ve always wanted to be called Pedro. It’s cooler-sounding, you know? And there’s four other people in our year named Peter. Four!”

That came as a surprise. Balthazar had always thought he was the only one who wanted, let alone had in mind, a different name.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “There’s this story I read once. I didn’t really understand all of it, it had a lot of big words, but there was this character in it with a really interesting name. I kind of – I like it a lot better.”

“What’s the name?” Peter said, eyes rapt with curiosity.

Balthazar held on to the knowledge of it for a few moments longer. He hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, ever, and the idea of relinquishing this piece of himself to someone who wasn’t him was more than a bit terrifying.

But this was Peter, and he was Balthazar’s first friend. And so he told him.

“Wow. Balthazar?” Peter said in hushed awe. “That’s so cool. You should get everyone to start calling you that. I’ll be the first. Hello, Balthazar. Nice to meet you, Balthazar.”

“Wait,” Balthazar said, feeling vaguely embarrassed and satisfied all at once, “but – “

One of the handlers, Miss Imogen, walked in, cutting Balthazar short. At the Fields, there were no teachers, or professors, or even parents, whatever those were; just handlers.

They started the lesson, but it was hard for Balthazar to pay attention when Peter kept on poking his elbow every now and then and shooting him meaningful glances. He knew that Peter wanted him to stand up and declare his new name, take ownership of it. It wasn’t that simple, though, was it? You didn’t just – _pick_ a name for yourself. That wasn’t how it worked. Balthazar was seven years old, and he already knew that wasn’t how it worked.

But the longer the class stretched on, the more he thought about it, really thought about it. _Why_ wasn’t it how it worked? What was so wrong about picking your own identity? Who was to say that anyone else should have picked out a name for him, a label that would be stuck to him for the rest of his existence, before he’d even been old enough to know what names were?

And why was it important to follow the way it worked if he didn’t even know for sure that’s how it worked?

Miss Imogen called on him by name to answer a question. It didn’t matter, really, what the question had been, and in any case Balthazar no longer remembered what it was anyway. But he did remember what came after, and that? That mattered. It mattered more than he could have possibly hoped to fathom at that age, probably more than he imagined even now.

At the time, though, it didn’t feel important, or revolutionary, or anything at all, really, to say, quietly, “I don’t want to be called Stanley anymore. My name is Balthazar.”

Everyone was silent. You didn’t not answer a question properly when the handlers asked you one, and you certainly didn’t claim another name for yourself. That kind of thing wasn’t in the rules. But, oddly enough, Balthazar didn’t feel embarrassed or indignant. Mostly, he just felt like he was making the choice that made sense.

Miss Imogen frowned. “Stanley, I don’t – “

It was then that the really, _really_ important thing happened.

Peter, glancing briefly at him, raised his hand and, before Miss Imogen could call on him, said, “I don’t want to be called Peter anymore, either. I want to be called Pedro.”

Balthazar turned to Peter – Pedro – in time to catch him sending over an encouraging smile. And in that fragile, strange moment, what little doubt had been present in his mind vanished.

Miss Imogen’s face was inscrutable. He thought, for a minute, that she would become angry enough to shout at them, that they would get in trouble. After a long pause, though, she simply asked them to sit down, and did not call on either of them for the rest of the lesson.

By the time class had ended, no one seemed to remember – or, at the least, want to talk about – what had happened. But Balthazar didn’t mind. He had said what he needed to say, and that mattered more than anything other people could say to him about it.

And Peter was Pedro, and everything had changed, but suddenly – suddenly everything felt right. The way it was supposed to be, even if Balthazar hadn’t known before that it was supposed to be that way.

The next morning, at breakfast, after Balthazar collected his tray, a spot of motion he saw from the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned his head. It was Pedro, waving him over to sit next to him and John.

He had never been asked to sit with someone before, let alone two people. He walked across the cafeteria and sat down across from Pedro, next to John.

“Hi,” Pedro said, sounding pleased.

“Hello,” Balthazar said. He could feel a smile creeping onto his face, and though he could have fought it back, he didn’t.

What they spoke of afterward was impossible to recall. Balthazar did remember what he felt in that time, though. He remembered the lightness in his chest as he laughed and smiled. He remembered, or at least he fancied that he did, what it felt like for the hope that someday he might feel like he belonged somewhere, or with someone, to be born in his heart.

After a while, Pedro excused himself to go to the bathroom, and left with his tray in hand. Balthazar and John, the latter of whom had been quiet through most of the meal, were left in silence. Balthazar glanced over shyly at John, wondering if he should say something. He didn’t think John disliked or distrusted him. Balthazar was older than him, though, so he might be scared of him. Not that anyone should be scared of Balthazar, honestly, but he knew what it was like to be next to people who were older than you, let alone those who were almost complete strangers.

He looked over again and, much to his surprise, caught John staring at him.

When their eyes met, John’s widened almost comically, and his head snapped back toward his tray. Balthazar resisted the urge to laugh. Though he would only be doing so out of surprise, he knew how mean-spirited it would seem.

“What is it?” he asked, as gently as he could.

“Um…” John looked back at him, slowly, bashfully. “Do you want your blueberry muffin? We can trade. I haven’t eaten mine, either. It’s bran.”

Balthazar didn’t particularly like bran muffins. He didn’t like blueberry muffins either, though, so he figured it wasn’t so much a loss. He could always just give his muffin to John, but John had offered the trade first. It would be disrespectful to disregard the offer.

So he smiled and said, “Sure.”

They traded their muffins and John began to eat his new one happily. “Thank you,” John said. “You’re the best. Peter _never_ gives me his blueberry muffin.”

Balthazar laughed. “You can have all my blueberry muffins, from now on.”

John froze mid-chew, his eyes widening again. “Do you really mean it?”

It was a good feeling, Balthazar thought, to make other people smile. With Pedro, it was almost effortless; he didn’t have to think about it, because they were both making each other smile. But with John, it was a conscious choice, and that choice rewarded him with the sense that he’d chosen right. He decided he liked that feeling a lot.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I mean it.”

“Wow, thanks,” John said, voice hushed in awe.

“There’s a catch, though,” Balthazar said.

Instantly, he could sense John grow more wary. “Yeah?”

Balthazar couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “You always have to call me the best from now on.”

John’s shoulders relaxed. “I’ll do what I want,” he said, voice muffled around a mouthful of muffin.

Balthazar thought on that. “Compromise?” he suggested.

“Mhm?”

“Just call me better than Pedro,” he said.

“Done,” John said, and, for the first time that whole conversation, smiled. Balthazar grinned back so hard his cheeks hurt.

It was fairly obvious to him, from then on, that while Pedro was his first friend, one simple fulfillment of a request had made John his second. That was just the way it was.

-

After the first day, Balthazar and Ursula settled into a bit of a rhythm. He had a couple of other donors to attend to in different centers, but still had enough time to visit Ursula three or four days a week for long and lazy afternoons of conversation, with some extra time left over to stock up on things they didn’t offer in the recovery centers. It wasn’t strictly against carer policy to bring in outside food or books, nor was it strictly allowed. He’d developed the habit a long time ago, though, and the possibility of breaking the rules a little was worth the happiness he could afford his donors. Some were luckier than others, but for the most part donors had had little opportunity throughout their lives to get what they wanted. So, when he could, he wanted to help them know what it was like to take pleasure in small comforts.

For Ursula, he brought fresh fruit, flowers to brighten up her windowsill, the occasional bar of dark chocolate. At least once a week, he tried to bring in a new book from the library near his flat. One afternoon, he walked into her room and deposited a disposable camera on her lap with a vague sense of triumph.

It wasn’t a very good camera, just one of those plastic things they had hanging on racks by the cash register. But Ursula ran her fingers over it gently, almost reverently, and it made Balthazar’s heart sing a little when she picked it up and held it to her eye.

“I know there’s not much to photograph in here,” Balthazar said, “but, uh, I can have the film developed for you when you’re done with the roll.”

She lowered the camera and said, eyes shining, “Thank you, Balthazar.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to look too pleased.

They were quiet for a while. Balthazar sat in the chair near the window, giving Ursula the time she needed to acquaint herself with the camera. She pointed the thing at various, random objects in the room, sometimes at Balthazar himself, punctuating her gaze with the occasional click that indicated she’d taken a picture.

Finally, she said into the silence, “Do you remember, back in the Cottages, when I had my polaroid camera?”

Ursula’s camera. It was somewhat silly of her to ask, since Balthazar obviously remembered her propensity for photography. But yes, of course he remembered the camera, that beautiful machine from decades past that developed pictures heartbeats after she snapped them, always in her hands or hanging about her neck. Whenever he thought about Ursula at the Cottages, he could not dredge up an image of her in which she was without it.

“Yes,” he said. “I remember. We found it on that one trip we went on, didn’t we?”

“One of the things I really miss from the Cottages,” Ursula said, with a sigh. “But you know what I miss more? The pictures I took.”

Her statement conjured up thoughts of her room at the Cottages, walls covered from ceiling to floor with pictures of heartbeat moments, and then he thought about all the time he’d spent in that wonderful, magical place, sitting hip to hip with Ursula and a mug of tea in his hands, talking about the things they thought about into the night.

He wondered what had happened to the stacks of endless photographs when Ursula left. Tossed into the trash, most likely. Or maybe the next person who lived in that room had decided, in some random bout of nostalgia for things they’d never experienced, to leave them up. Maybe they were still stuck to the walls of a room he would never walk into again, pictures of seconds Balthazar would never relive except in dreams and soft-edged memories.

“We should go for a drive,” he said. “So you can take pictures. Real pictures.”

Ursula’s eyes lit up, and he knew that it had been the right thing to say.

Within a week, he’d finished the necessary arrangements to allow Ursula out of the center for a day. It was a day that was slotted for her to get some tests at a different center done, so it wasn’t particularly difficult to secure permission not to be back at Messina until that night, but when he told Ursula she grinned and hugged him tightly.

They left Messina on an overcast Tuesday morning. Despite the weather, there was good feeling all around, and the conversation didn’t run dry for the whole drive. Balthazar knew that Ursula wasn’t one to stay still for very long, and she’d been in the center for some time now, so the outing was probably very welcome on her end. He told her that he couldn’t promise this all that often; she told him he worried too much.

After the tests were done, he found a small parking lot in the town, and they walked down street after street, periodically pausing so she could point her camera at something interesting. It was satisfying to see her walk so straight, so strong. She’d only given one donation, sure, but he had the feeling that she could be one of those donors who made it to their fourth. There was never any guarantee with this kind of thing, of course, and sometimes it had a lot more to do with luck than anything else, but he’d done this for long enough that he’d developed a fairly good sense for how strong his donors were, an instinct he trusted more often than not.

After an hour or two, Ursula asked to sit at a bench, to rest her tired feet, and he complied. They exchanged some light conversation for a bit and fell into silence, as they tended to do these days.

Then –

“How many of us did you pick, Balthazar?”

It was a question asked quietly but seriously, a calm that concealed a sense of gravity he could nonetheless feel.

“You’re the third,” he said. “Out of us, anyway. I’ve cared for others from the Fields and the Cottages. And I always kind of paid attention to the donors talk, so that’s how I knew about everyone else.”

She didn’t ask how he knew what she was really getting at, only sighed. “Do you go out sometimes?”

He had to laugh at that.

“What’s the point?” he said. “The only person I can go out with now is you – or my other donors, I suppose – and we always have to make this show of it now, jump through all these pointless hoops just so you can get off Messina grounds. Can’t even leave without a proper excuse, yeah? And I was never the one who was good at pretending I couldn’t see what they thought of us.”

“They wouldn’t know it if they saw you,” Ursula said.

“They’ve gotten better at spotting it. Especially when I’m – “ Balthazar stopped midsentence.

“You were going to say ‘with a donor’, weren’t you.”

She didn’t sound angry, but he still felt ashamed.

“It’s okay, Balthazar,” she said quietly. “I was a carer too. We all were.”

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?” He rubbed at his eyes tiredly. “We all know what it’s like. What it’s all like.”

“You know, you can just say what’s on your mind,” Ursula said. “We’re not at the Cottages anymore, or the Fields. You don’t need to hide from me.”

He wanted to say that he wasn’t. But he would be lying if he did, wouldn’t he? When _hadn’t_ he hid from Ursula, or from anyone? But he wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot. Hiding was a trademark of being what they were.

Ursula sighed again. “How long have you been working again?”

“Nine years,” he said, grateful for the change in subject. Sometimes, despite the change in scenery, talking to Ursula felt exactly like it did at the Cottages, Ursula prodding at certain topics persistently but knowing exactly when to pull away. “Ten, by the end of this year.”

“You’ll be, what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine? I’m about the same. Nine years free. I suppose we should be grateful.”

“Being a carer is not freedom,” Balthazar said. He’d meant to sound nonchalant, joking even. Somewhere along the line, though, between when he thought to say those words and when they formed in his throat, something else decided to bleed through. Anger? Bitterness? Whatever it was, it made the statement seem rather off, even to his own ears, and it hung awkwardly in its own silence.

Ursula looked at him briefly, the expression on her face unreadable. She got up, then. “We should probably be getting back to Messina.” He followed her to the car. The conversation was, for all intents and purposes, over. Even so, it felt like it shouldn’t be.

-

Balthazar had the impression that the other people at the Cottages liked to keep to themselves, but that certainly wasn’t true in the house that he lived in. There was a common room they shared onto which all the bedrooms opened with the upstairs rooms only a rickety flight of open stairs away, high-ceilinged and permeated by the musty, yet comforting smell of old wood. It had a ring of comfortable chairs, the kind that you sank into more than sat in, loosely surrounding a low coffee table, on which perched an old-fashioned television that only picked up a handful of channels. And it was here, mostly, that they spent time together as a group, though most afternoons they could as often as not be found in the farmhouse’s kitchen for some tea and a long chat.

He liked it at the Cottages. He liked not having to interact with other people if he didn’t want to. He liked taking a book outside to lie in the weak sun with the tall grass tickling his legs, and spending an hour or two watching television while slowly learning what the people on the outside were like, and especially finding out what it was like not to have handlers around. He liked all the less good things too, the chores that the old man – Keffers – gave them because they kept his hands busy and because they actually made him feel useful, and the wind that snuck into his room late at night through the tiny cracks in the walls because that just gave him an excuse to burrow closer into his warm scratchy blankets. It was an imperfect place, the Cottages, and he liked it that way. He’d be uncomfortable somewhere that was perfect. And anyway, no matter how many complaints you had about it there was no questioning that it was a better place to live at than the Fields.

There were two things that he liked the most about living at the Cottages.

The first was the piano in one of the farmhouse’s sitting rooms.

It was old and dusty, as he had guessed, a small upright thing that seemed as if it hadn’t been played in a very long time. It was also slightly out of tune, but that didn’t really matter so much to him because he loved that piano, fell in love with it almost as soon as he saw it. At the Fields, he’d had to sneak into the handlers’ lounge and press on the keys as quietly as he could so people wouldn’t know that he was there, but here he could play as loudly as he wanted. He couldn’t pretend that he was much good at it, honestly, because though he’d spent almost as long as he could remember sneaking into that lounge after hours he only had the songs he heard on the radio as guidance and a stack of practice books he’d had to read in the dark. But it didn’t really matter to him if he was good or not, as long as he could play it. And here he could play for hours on end.

The second was his friends.

It took only a short while to become close to the others. Of course, he was lucky to have already known Pedro, who he saw most often because they lived in the rooms next to each other, but knowing Pedro also meant that he got to know Beatrice and Ben better. It was difficult not to in such close quarters. It was difficult not to be charmed by their endless wit, even when it was used most often to go at each other every time they were in the same room. In Balthazar’s humble opinion, they were at their best and their wittiest when in each other’s company, though he figured that if he told them that, he’d be answered by fierce denial.

Meg he saw less often, though that could probably be attributed more to her propensity to interact with people outside of their small group over anything else. Balthazar thought she was very kind in her own teasing way, and also very fierce about what she thought. However, he couldn’t deny that the main reason he felt close to Meg was because of Ursula, and all in all that development was probably the biggest surprise of those first few months at the Cottages, though after a while he wondered if it should have been.

It started with the hot chocolate.

He’d been in the kitchen late one evening, staring down at the bits of cocoa powder dissolving in the water he’d just boiled. Truthfully, he wasn’t really one for cooking, but this endeavor was especially abysmal. He was about to toss it in the bin when the door to the kitchen opened, and Ursula came in.

She had a bar of chocolate in her hands, the kind that looked gorgeously dark and unfairly delicious. Before he could ask her where she’d gotten hold of such a thing, she started and said, “Oh! I hadn’t been expecting anyone here. Uh, do you mind if I use the kitchen for a bit?”

Balthazar shook his head with a small laugh. “Was just about to leave, actually,” he said. “Tried to make some hot chocolate just now and… well, it didn’t really go as planned. Good luck with whatever.” He waved his hand and made for the door.

“Wait.”

He turned around, raising his eyebrow inquisitively.

Ursula smiled bashfully. “Coincidentally, that was also what I was going to try for. Hot chocolate, I mean. I always make too much for myself, so, uh, would you like some? When I finish it, I mean.”

“Sure, yeah,” Balthazar said. Truthfully, failing at hot chocolate hadn’t really helped at getting rid of his sudden craving for it. If anything, it had only made it worse.

He sat at one of the stools in the counter as she worked in silence, breaking the chocolate into small pieces, melting it in a pot as she carefully poured in the milk. It wasn’t even finished, and it already looked infinitely better than anything Balthazar could produce.

“That looks amazing,” he said as she poured it into mugs. “You couldn’t have learned to do something like that at the Fields.”

“Oh, well, it’s not that hard, really. I only tried it out a week ago, and it turned out pretty okay,” Ursula said, shrugging. “You’re right, I read the recipe somewhere a few years back but the Fields doesn’t have a kitchen like here. It’s pretty amazing, actually, what this kitchen is stocked with.”

“I’ll say,” he said, taking the warm mug from her gratefully. Drinking a bit of it was a treat in itself. It was everything he had hoped for and more. “So…”

“Let’s walk back together,” Ursula said before he could continue. “I mean, it’s dark outside, and we’re going to the same place anyway, aren’t we?”

Even on that first night, Balthazar was struck by how it seemed like she knew what he’d been going to say.

They talked all the way back. Balthazar hadn’t been prepared for how easy it would be, had spent most of his existence unsure of how exactly to interact with other people. Even with Pedro, it had taken a while for him to feel truly comfortable in his company. But there was something… Something in the quiet thoughtfulness of Ursula’s various observations, even the ones about mundane-seeming things; something in how she could figure out what he was going to say in the moments when he didn’t really want to say it out loud, and yet give him the space to formulate his words when he was trying hard to articulate his thoughts.

With other people, he could feel forced into talking with them at times, no matter how much he liked them. Somehow, though, it seemed right to be Ursula’s friend. And, retrospectively, it made sense that they’d found each other at the Cottages rather than at the Fields. At the Fields, in his youth, he’d needed people like Pedro and John to push his boundaries, to force him out of complacency. But here, he needed support, quiet but firm affirmation of his thoughts and values, that he could return in discreet kind. It made sense.

He followed Ursula to her room. It was before they’d found her camera, so the walls were bare, but her comforter was a patchwork of colorful patterns, and there was a window seat with a faded blue cushion and enough room for the both of them. He liked the place already.

“And I think – well, I guess I’m worried about Meg,” Ursula said as they sat at the window, finishing the last of her hot chocolate with a tiny frown.

“She seems like she’s been adjusting the best out of all of us,” Balthazar pointed out. “I mean, sure, we’ve all talked to the others here, but…”

“Yeah.” Ursula chewed at her lip. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid. She’s been hanging out with this older guy – Robbie – and, well, I don’t know. I don’t want him to take advantage of her. But it’s not like she talks to me about this, you know? I just hope that she’s safe.”

“Meg knows how to take care of herself,” Balthazar said.

“Yeah,” Ursula said. Then she smiled. “Leave it to me to have most of my worries be about other people. Meg always said I needed to care more about myself. But I don’t know. There’s not much about myself to be worried about right now. I like the Cottages, you know? I like the tasks Keffers assigns us. I like the freedom.”

Freedom was a nice word. Balthazar wondered if it described what this was, living in a place and doing things that had been assigned to them. They could go to other places if they wanted to, he supposed. Did they want to?

“And what about you?”

“Hm?” he said, shaken out of his thoughts.

“Anything to worry about?”                                                                                                                           

He thought for a moment. “Nah,” he said finally. “It’s just, I knew I’d never miss the Fields, you know? So it’s – weird to me, that there are people who do. Why would they miss a place like that?”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Talking about Pedro.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I think that some people would rather remember the good things over the bad things. Less painful. And there were good things, weren’t there?”

She was right, though Balthazar didn’t really see the appeal in blocking badness out, either. What was the point in lying to yourself?

“Yeah, there was,” he said slowly. “It was mostly Pedro and John, for me. They were the cause of most of the good things. But as much as I might miss John, Pedro has more reason to miss him than I do.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of those two and their ‘brothers’ pact,” Ursula said. “I know everyone used to say that it was strange. We can’t even have real brothers, right? But I could see where they were coming from. It’s nice not to feel alone, in a place like the Fields.”

Balthazar was pleased, honestly, that Ursula understood. It made him feel all the more inclined to try to be friends with her.

“He hasn’t really mentioned John,” Balthazar said. “I guess none of us have really talked about the Fields, aside from you and me just now. But I thought it would hit him harder.”

“Maybe it’s because he knows John will probably be here next year,” Ursula suggested. “I mean, I suppose it’s a bit of a toss-up, but it’s pretty likely.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Balthazar said, though deep down he knew that didn’t feel right. When they’d left the Fields, the way Pedro and John had said goodbye to each other had been… almost…

Permanent.

Ursula was probably right about blocking out bad memories that hurt. But maybe there was something to be said, as well, for blocking out the good memories that caused pain.

“I should probably go to bed soon,” Ursula said, checking her watch. “It’s rather late.”

“Oh.” Balthazar hadn’t even noticed the time, or that he’d spent almost an hour and a half just talking to Ursula. There was still a bit of hot chocolate left in the bottom of his mug, though at this point it wasn’t really hot at all. “I can…?”

“No, it’s okay, leave it here,” Ursula said with a smile. “I’ll take them back up to the house tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Balthazar smiled back, and it felt real. It was nice to find someone new he could really smile at. “We should do this some other time.”

He walked back to his room on his own, only a few steps, really, and crawled into bed with the satisfaction of having spent the night well still warm in his chest. He stared out the window at the night sky, the moon a thin sliver hanging low above the shadowy hills, and fell asleep counting the stars.

The next afternoon, he found himself in Pedro’s room. He’d only been in there a handful of times – most of the times he saw Pedro were more encounters than they were conscious decisions to see each other – but Pedro had asked him to help decorate his room, now that he finally had the allowance needed to get things like room decorations, and Balthazar didn’t mind agreeing.

Helping Pedro to decorate, as it turned out, meant sitting on Pedro’s floor and watching as Pedro struggled to paste giant posters on his walls. On the issue of the posters, Pedro insisted he could put them up on his own. Balthazar was there, apparently, to help supervise the proper placement of the posters. Mostly he just sang songs from the radio by memory and laughed every time Pedro lost his balance on the unstable stool he was trying to use for his purposes.

Even without the posters, Balthazar didn’t know if he agreed that his room was “better” than Pedro’s in any way. They were about the same size and had almost the same furniture set up. Besides, wherever Pedro lived automatically felt his, no matter how bare the walls were. He didn’t need wall decorations or anything like that to make a room feel welcome. He could do that all on his own, without much effort at all.

After twenty minutes, Pedro gave up on the fourth one and left it hanging with only half its corners suspended. It drooped sadly over itself, but Pedro just waved his hand dismissively at it and flopped down next to Balthazar.

“What do you think?” he said to the walls, cocking his head.

“They’re fine,” Balthazar answered.

“Just fine? Why, Balthazar, this here is the ultimate workmanship of someone who clearly knows how to decorate a room.”

“Okay, sure,” Balthazar said. “That’s why all the posters are crooked.”

“ _Blasphemy_ , Balthazar!”

“Blasphemy, or complete and total honesty?”

“Definitely blasphemy,” Pedro said, and promptly began to poke Balthazar in his sides relentlessly.

A few moments later, insides aching from laughing helplessly, Balthazar collapsed on his back, facing the ceiling. Without hesitation, Pedro laid his head on his stomach, refusing to move even when Balthazar complained about it. Eventually, he just let it happen, and his hand drifted toward Pedro’s head almost of its own accord, his fingers threading absently through Pedro’s hair, over and over, a rhythm he couldn’t quite identify.

They settled into a familiar silence. In times like this, words were never necessary, not for Balthazar, at least. He didn’t feel the need to disturb the peace when it felt so good to rest in it. He just lay there and tried to count the swirls in the wood of the ceiling planks.

Pedro, of course, was far more restless than Balthazar was, at any given time. It wasn’t all that surprising that he was the first to break the moment, to plunge fearlessly into the unspoken, the unknown.

“It’s good here, Balth,” Pedro said.

Balthazar twisted his fingers lightly in Pedro’s hair and continued to pick out the patterns in the wood above him. He always managed to lose track around ten or eleven. There were too many of them, and they were too far for him to really make out.

“Yeah,” he said finally, giving up on the ceiling. “I think so, too.”

“We’re going to go to the ocean one day,” Pedro said with a content little sigh. “Place like this? We can make it happen.”

Balthazar closed his eyes, and tried not to pull too hard at Pedro’s scalp. In the darkness, he focused on the weight of Pedro’s head on his abdomen, and the softness of his hair against his fingertips.

“Yeah,” he said. “We will.”

So that was what living at the Cottages was like, and after he settled into a routine, he found he enjoyed it quite a lot. Almost every night, Balthazar and Ursula made time for hot chocolate. Every afternoon, he spent time with the others over tea. Sometimes, he hung out in Pedro’s room, with other people or without them, lounging around in the comfort of shared silence. And the rest of the time, he had to himself, the books and the piano and the chores he did in quiet solitude. Even into the cold, rainy winter, when he had to stop hanging outside so much, he felt good. Things were good.

He remembered waking up to the first snowy day of the year, two inches of white completely smothering the dead grass, and thinking about what would come after the winter, and looking forward to it.

-

Balthazar liked being a carer. He really did. He just couldn’t help but wonder how he would feel once he stopped, whether he’d actually miss the work or whether he’d feel grateful about it, like every donor he’d ever talked to about it said they’d felt.

He couldn’t imagine missing the job once he had to stop, not the long hours or the little he got in return for the quiet, endless work he put into it. He couldn’t really imagine feeling grateful about stopping, either. Not when he didn’t really know anymore what it was like to be someone who didn’t care.

Maybe he’d just be like everyone else, and maybe that was okay. He couldn’t think of a single reason why he should be special.

These were thoughts he could not tell Ursula, mostly because he was ashamed of these awful thoughts his mind couldn’t stop having but also because he wouldn’t be able to bear it if she didn’t understand. She’d understood so much of him in all the time they’d known each other that he didn’t know what he would feel if she didn’t, and he didn’t want to know. For this reason, their conversations rarely turned too serious. He never let them. They carried on with their lives, the carer looking after the patient, and normalcy actually felt within reach, for once.

Until, of course, it wasn’t.

One afternoon, Balthazar came in to find Ursula sleeping. He meant to be as quiet as possible, but as soon as he sat in the chair, her eyes fluttered open.

“Ah, sorry,” she murmured, sitting up and rubbing at her eyes.

“I should be the one apologizing, I didn’t mean to interrupt…”

“No, no, I just…” she sighed. “Had a late night.”

Balthazar saw, then, the piece of paper on the table beside her bed.

“The notice for your second donation,” he said.

“Yeah.” She pursed her lips and looked out the window. “In a month.”

“You’ll make it through,” Balthazar said with conviction. “We should go out again, so you can take some more pictures. Who knows when…”

“When’s the next time I’ll be able to, you mean?” Ursula said.

God, he really was bad at this, wasn’t he? Who the hell said things like that?

“I’m sorry.”

Ursula waved her hand. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it that way. Anyway, I think I’d rather stay here, for a while. I don’t know if I told you this, but they have some really lovely trails nearby, and they always let me go if I ask to get a nurse to accompany me. And the other donors here are interesting people.”

He nodded in agreement. “Whatever you want.”

She smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Balthazar.”

“You know, I’m serious though,” he said quietly. “You’ll make it through. I know you will. Us Fields folk, We’re fighters. We kind of had to be, didn’t we?”

Her eyes widened at his words. But then she smiled again, smaller and softer, and reached out to give his fingers a silent squeeze. It hadn’t been much of a statement, but he’d been glad that he said it, because it was true, and there were very few still around who could understand that truth.

And here was the thing. Years could separate Balthazar and Ursula, countless moments they hadn’t shared, experiences and feelings they would never find out about, yet nothing could take away what they did have in common. Nothing could take away the Cottages, or even the Fields, the places they’d lived together, the memories Balthazar kept tucked under his breastbone.

It had been the same with the other donors he’d had the privilege of choosing. And then they’d completed, and he hadn’t shared those things with them anymore. He did not think about the inevitability of it, in relation to Ursula or to anyone else. He just smiled back at her.


	2. Part II part i - Unseen Tides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s keep each other company with stories.”
> 
> Balthazar considered the proposition. “What kind of stories?”
> 
> “The real kind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Companion gifset](http://douchenuts.tumblr.com/post/146819248577/is-it-the-right-word-were-going-to-the-ocean) by [niuniujiaojiao](http://niuniujiaojiao.tumblr.com).
> 
> Warning: misogynistic slurs. If there's anything that I missed that aren't covered by this fic's tags, please let me know.

**[Part II – Unseen Tides](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqlkJFiH1Dk) **

_“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.”_

-

_i._

“How is she doing?”

Balthazar disliked this part, or at least as much as he could dislike anything. Talking to the doctors was probably one of his least favorite aspects of being a carer, though also one of the most necessary. Not that there was anything inherently wrong with the doctors, per se. Most of the ones he’d encountered had been perfectly pleasant people. It was just that there were so many of them he’d had to deal with in his time, and they never stayed, simply came for a hurried conversation about the donors – rarely called patients, and never called by their names – and then he never saw that particular doctor again. But the fact that they would come was practically a given, one doctor taking the place of the last, their faces blurring together in a dispassionate monotone of bad and worse news.

This one had short, iron gray hair that curled around her ears, and he constantly had to glance down at her name tag to make sure he was addressing her properly. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t stick around long enough for him to have to really learn her name.

“The donor is doing about as well as can be expected,” the doctor said, glancing down at her clipboard. “Much weaker than the last donation, but again, this is to be expected.”

“And I can see her?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the doctor replied with a hint of impatience. “She will need bedrest for several weeks, but I have prescribed the proper medications, and I believe she will regain consciousness soon, if she hasn’t already. She is not to be put on any more painkillers than the current amount, if she asks, but if there is anything else she needs, I trust you to do your job well.”

That was something else he disliked, the way the doctors always talked like they had something more urgent they needed to be getting to that Balthazar was keeping them from. Like being a carer wasn’t difficult enough to merit attention, or like being a donor wasn’t important enough to consider outside of their donations.

“Yes,” he said, and smiled.

About ten minutes later, plain bagel with cream cheese in hand, he opened the door and walked in. Ursula was awake, but barely, her eyes half-lidded and focused on the translucent curtains. Balthazar placed the paper plate on the table next to her bed and drew up a chair.

“Good morning, Balthazar,” Ursula said, her face turned away.

“How are you feeling?”

She looked at him, turning her head with some effort, and smiled, slowly.

“Peachy.”

Balthazar felt the corner of his mouth twitch up. “Good, then.”

“Better than anything.”

“I brought you breakfast, if you want it. It’s fine if you don’t.”

“I’ll have it in a bit. Though I’ll need your help spreading the cheese, I think. If I understand right, I’m not supposed to be handling semi-sharp objects in my condition.”

He laughed. “You’d be a danger, for sure.”

“Yeah?” She smiled up at the ceiling. “The doctor’s verdict?”

“Bedrest for a couple weeks, maybe more. I’m to keep a very strict eye on you.”

“Ah, yes. I’m quite the trouble maker.”

“I can keep you company for the rest of the day, if you’d like,” Balthazar said. “My schedule’s clear. If you don’t want me I’ll just have to go back to my flat and feel sorry for myself.”

“And we wouldn’t want that, of course.”

“Yeah, I’d prefer to avoid feeling sorry for myself if I can,” Balthazar said dryly.

“Here’s an idea,” Ursula said. “Let’s keep each other company with stories.”

Balthazar considered the proposition. “What kind of stories?”

“The real kind.”

Balthazar paused.

“Okay.”

They went back and forth, swapping tales about their time as carers, the cracks of their lives the other didn’t know about yet. Sometimes, the stories would only take two sentences to tell. Sometimes, they’d take half an hour.

“I guess I never told you how I came to care for Hero and Meg, did I?...”

“We found this town somewhere near the shore with this killer cassette tape collection, which, you know, is sort of rare considering people don’t really listen to tapes anymore…”

“Some of the patients I looked after were so young. I mean, I guess we all were, but I think some of the ones I had were barely carers at all before their first notice…”

“It’s been years since I last went to the sea, but words could never describe how it feels to actually _go_ …”

“And you know, I actually ran into Ben and Beatrice a while back. I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to get into the same center, on the same floor. Some part of me could never have been surprised…”

“I know, technically, you’re not supposed to keep the things your patients leave behind after they complete, but also I don’t think either of us really cared about the rules at that point…”

After a while, they found a lull in the exchange, a space in which neither of them were sure what to follow up with. Balthazar was perfectly fine with that. He liked the silence, as long as both of them were comfortable in it. And so he sat next to Ursula’s bed, and thought about nothing in particular.

“Balthazar?” Ursula said suddenly, quietly.

“Hm?”

“Can I admit something to you?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember that time we all went on that day trip?”

The one time it ever happened. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I never really understood it,” Ursula said, casting her eyes downward. “I never really understood what happened. Why it happened.”

Balthazar focused on his breathing, the sound of it, the rhythm.

“It was a long time ago.”

“But you do, right? You know why.”

Inhale.

“Yeah. More or less.”

“There’s a story to tell.”

Exhale.

“You could say that.”

“If it was a long time ago, why does it matter now?”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

-

One cool night, about a year after they first arrived at the Cottages, Balthazar walked up the stairs to his room, feeling rather warm despite himself. The chat he had with Ursula that night had been particularly long, and the hot chocolate had stayed hot for a long time. He was so absorbed by his own contentment that he almost collided with someone at the top of the landing.

“Ah, sorry – “

“Oh, hello there, Balthazar.”

He blinked up at the other person. “Pedro? Are you leaving the house?”

Pedro rubbed at the back of his neck. “Something like that?”

“It’s past midnight.”

“I’m just going out,” Pedro said, a hint of discomfort in his voice. “Going to bed, then?”

Balthazar rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Oh, okay.” A shift of weight from one foot to another.

“Stay safe, yeah?”

“It’s just the Cottages.”

“Yeah, but...” Balthazar shook his head, pulling his sleeves over his hands. “Just in case.”

Pedro grinned, almost sheepishly. “Well, thanks.”

“Yeah.”

“Talk to you later, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” Balthazar let a corner of his mouth drift upward. “Good night, Pedro.”

“Yeah, good night.” Balthazar turned to watch as Pedro made his way down the stairs and out the door, and did not wonder where he was going, or about the fact that he was going out alone. There didn’t seem to be anything to worry about, or at the least Pedro didn’t want him to.

And anyway, they saw each other a lot these days, more often, even, than they had their last few years at the Fields. Pedro was always talking about something funny he’d seen on TV, some hilarious antic a nameless friend had pulled, and Balthazar was always listening. If there really was anything to be concerned about, Balthazar figured he would notice it sooner or later.

No, he wasn’t worried. Despite the initial misgivings Pedro had expressed, it looked to Balthazar as if Pedro was born to fit in at the Cottages.

It was the atmosphere, maybe, or the overall casual approach to socialization. It wasn’t difficult for Pedro to find new friends in general, but there was something about the no-obligations interaction, juxtaposed with the close quarters, that allowed him to flourish. Maybe it was just that the Cottages suited everyone, no matter what your personality. Balthazar certainly didn’t feel out of place. If Meg was the first to branch out of their group, though, Pedro eventually became the most thorough. Sometimes, it seemed to Balthazar as if he was friends with everyone. He was always bringing around new people to their house or whenever they met in the kitchen for tea, and Balthazar couldn’t possibly hope to learn all of their names. Somehow, he knew Pedro didn’t expect him to, either.

And it was fine. Balthazar wasn’t alone. He hung out with Pedro a lot, though more often than not it was alone, in private. He had Ursula, and everyone else, and the musty smell of his books and the music that spun in an eternal dance around his head.

He didn’t quite know why he was so preoccupied with whether he would be worried or not about Pedro. Maybe it was because Ursula asked him about it, more or less, just a week or so after the incident on the stairwell. He was been sitting on her window seat, hands curled around a mostly cooled cup of hot chocolate. She was on her bed, idly thumbing through a tattered notebook and scribbling the odd note here and there, as he squeezed himself onto the cushioned bench with his knees bent toward his chest.

“Do you ever get worried about your friends?” Ursula said, casually.

Balthazar let his gaze slide toward her. “How do you mean?”

Ursula sighed. “I dunno, maybe it’s silly of me. Despite myself, I still worry about Meg. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I guess maybe I’d feel better about it if I could spend more time with her. You know? Have you ever felt that way? Am I just being silly?”

He thought, briefly, about the incident on the stairs. About all the questions he wanted to ask, and didn’t dare to. About how sometimes, he thought maybe Pedro didn’t tell him things because he had someone else to say those things to, and how stupid he felt to be thinking something like that.

“No, I don’t think it’s silly,” Balthazar said quietly. “I know what you mean. Especially because most of the time you’ve no idea if it’s even your place to.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t really know if we should worry or not,” he said. “But it’s important that they trust us, and that we trust them. Friendships are better that way.”

Ursula nodded sagely. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

It was true that Pedro went out late at night, and it was true that he didn’t talk to Balthazar about everything. But why shouldn’t he go out? And why should he talk about everything? He had no responsibility to do so, no obligation. He could do whatever he wanted.

And of course, just because Pedro didn’t talk to him about everything didn’t mean he didn’t talk to him at all. The next afternoon, while he read a book Ursula had lent him in his room, there was a knock on his door, and it turned out to be Pedro himself.

“Hello,” Balthazar said, the word slipping out of his mouth before he could stop his surprise from coloring it. He’d been so preoccupied with what he was doing that it simply didn’t occurred to him that he might have the opportunity to see anyone, let alone Pedro, that day.

“Hi,” Pedro said, hands in his pockets. “Can I talk to you for a bit?”

 “Of course. Uh, here, you can sit down.” Balthazar scooted to the side and patted the newly vacated spot on the bed next to him. “Better than just standing there, I’d reckon.”

“Yeah. Okay, sure.” Pedro crossed the floor and sat down heavily, leaning his back against the headboard with a sigh. Balthazar couldn’t decide if it sounded like a sound of annoyance or relief.

“So…” Balthazar began hesitantly.

“I need your advice,” Pedro interrupted.

“Okay, go on.”

“I know this is sudden.” Pedro sighed again, sharply through his teeth, and ran both of his hands through his hair. “I just feel like I haven’t really – okay, well, I’m confused, mostly, and I figure out of anyone here you’d probably understand the best.”

Balthazar blinked. “Confused about - ?”

“About Beatrice.”

“Oh.”

Pedro continued speaking. “I guess I’m not asking for anything specific. I dunno. Ugh. This is strange.”

Of course Pedro would find talking about his feelings strange.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

“No, I just – ” He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers, scrunching up his face in annoyance. “I like her. I really, really like her.”

“Yeah, I know,” Balthazar said. “You’ve liked her since we were in our second to last year at the Fields. We’ve, uh, kind of been over this.”

“Well, yeah, but the more we’re here, the more I feel like I have to do something about it, you know?” Pedro made a wild, abstract gesture with both of his hands. “We’ve already been here for a year, it’s only a matter of time before – you know. So I feel like I have to do _something_ before it’s too late, but, well, you know what she’s always said about couples, and I’ve never – you know. I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing. But you do, right?”

Balthazar shifted uncomfortably. “Are you sure it’s me you should be talking to about this?”

Pedro looked at him. “Why wouldn’t I talk to you about this?”

“Because…”

Because Balthazar wasn’t the only one who had experience with “couples” from back at the Fields, for starters, but his experience was probably different from anything that could produce helpful advice for a situation like this. Or because feelings for other people had never been a favorite topic of theirs, even in their younger, closer years.

The more he thought about it, though, the more stupid he felt. None of that mattered, really, not in the long run.

“I dunno,” Balthazar said. “I guess you just always seemed like you could handle this kind of thing on your own well enough.”

He could feel Pedro looking at him. Out of surprise? Disbelief? He didn’t know, almost didn’t even dare to glance back.

“You know I’m not – “ Pedro broke off, sounding frustrated. “I mean… I’m not perfect.”

Balthazar felt a twinge of shame, somewhere in his gut. “I know. I’m sorry, that was a dumb thing to say.”

Pedro shook his head. “No, I think I get it.” He smiled, faintly. “We just haven’t been talking so much lately, yeah?”

“Yeah, we have,” Balthazar said incredulously.

“No, but I mean – about the things that matter. We used to a lot, when we were kids.”

“Yeah, well.” Balthazar looked down at his hands. “We were kids.”

“Yeah.” Pedro sighed. “I guess it just… feels different here. At the Cottages, I mean. You know what I’m saying?”

Was he referring to the different responsibilities? The different rules of conversation? The idyllic air that seemed to permeate everywhere, and everything? It was very difficult to know exactly what he meant. Maybe he meant it all.

“Yeah, I think so,” Balthazar said carefully.

“Anyway.”

“Anyway. Beatrice. Are you still asking me about her?”

“Beatrice,” Pedro groaned, letting his head fall back until it hit the wall with a dull thump. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Well…” Balthazar took in a deep breath. “I still don’t know why you’re asking me, honestly, but, uh, in my experience it’s better to just tell someone you like them than to not. It’s like, the worst thing that can happen is she says no, you know? But then you’ll know, at least. It’ll probably hurt a lot at once, but it’s better for it to hurt a lot at once than for it to hurt for a long time, right?”

Pedro looked over at him and smiled again, crookedly. “Speaking from experience?”

“Something like that.”

They sat like that for a minute, but the silence this time around was much more comfortable. Not completely amiable, perhaps, but thoughtful. They were both wrapped up in their own thoughts, and that was fine.

It was Pedro who broke the silence.

“You know,” he said, “it’s been a while since I’ve been in here. I didn’t realize you had a tape collection now.” He pointed to the small pile of cassette tapes next to Balthazar’s cassette player. Though it looked disorganized, Balthazar had the pile carefully arranged by year and alphabetical order.

“Yeah, yeah,” Balthazar said with a laugh. “Whenever Leo goes into town I ask him to bring me something back. Surprise me and all, right? Just to tide me over until we can drive ourselves and I can pick them out myself. Sometimes it’s a total flop, but sometimes he strikes gold.”

“Yeah?” Pedro walked over to the tapes and knelt down, his fingers brushing over their worn titles. “I think I’ve heard of The Beatles. Never listened to their music, though.”

“Well, that settles it,” Balthazar said. “You have to come back here now so you can listen to them.”

“You think I’ll like their stuff?”

“Well, you know, objectively speaking, it’ll probably be the best thing you ever hear,” Balthazar said gravely.

“Pfff. I’ll take your word for it.” Pedro turned his head toward him; he was still smiling.

It would be easy, almost too easy, to let things stay like this. Pedro’s happiness, its true form, was something Balthazar was rarely able to witness these days. But being in a situation where he could talk to Pedro – actually _talk_ to him about things – was even rarer, and for that reason he felt obligated to say what he did next.

Balthazar chewed at his lip. “We’re supposed to get the new people next month. You heard about that, right?”

Up until that point, Pedro had been perusing through the tapes, carefully picking them up and reading the words on their covers. Now, he was utterly still, one of them still in his hands.

“Yeah. I did.”

Feeling vaguely as if he’d made a mistake, Balthazar attempted to back-track. “Not that we know anything about it. Right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

“Pedro, are you okay?” Balthazar said. He tried to keep the concern from bleeding into his voice, because Pedro probably didn’t need to hear something like that, but he didn’t know how successful he was.

“I – yeah, sorry. I just – “

Abruptly, he placed the tape back into its proper place and stood up, expression inscrutable.

“I’ll talk to you later, then.”

And with that, he was gone.

It’s not like Balthazar hadn’t been expecting it. He knew exactly why Pedro would react that way. He was just annoyed with himself that he felt the need to bring it up in the first place.

Still, when he saw Pedro again that night, it was hard to find a reason to feel that way. It was an uncharacteristically warm evening, so they brought their dinner out to the porch and sat on the steps, the only light in the darkness an old lightbulb hanging above their heads swinging lightly in the wind, balancing their plates on their knees. Pedro reached out and snatched a piece of toast from Balthazar’s plate, but as much as he complained he couldn’t find it in himself to be mad, and he laughed himself breathless when Pedro wolfed down his food so fast he got hiccups. They brought their empty plates to the kitchen together, and walked back to their house together. Pedro pointed toward the sky excitedly; Balthazar had never seen so many stars.

“If it wasn’t so hot, I’d almost consider pitching a tent in a field out here, just so I could look at this,” Pedro said, his voice hushed.

“Not just the weather you’d have to worry about, though,” Balthazar said, smiling. “Wouldn’t you have to mind the spiders, too?”

“Oh my god.” Pedro’s nose scrunched up in disgust. “Don’t even.”

“Just take me with you,” Balthazar suggested. “I’ll defend you against the spiders, to my dying breath.”

“My knight in shining armor,” Pedro said, clutching at Balthazar’s shoulder dramatically. Their laughter rang out into the night. It occurred to Balthazar, sometime after they parted, that something in the air between them felt just like it had been at the Fields, in the early days when they’d been young boys. His heart swelled at the thought.

After that, not that much changed between them, but Balthazar found himself having a good time when they saw each other. They sat next to each other at meals, or they commandeered the television to watch some dusty DVD Pedro found while cleaning the farmhouse’s attic. Or sometimes they just sat in the grass, Balthazar flipping lazily through a book as Pedro told him stories about his other friends, and hoped for the spring to turn to summer soon.

There was one particularly memorable evening that stood out amidst the blur of that happy but delicate time, one that was hard to think of and harder to forget. They’d been walking back to the house together after dinners, usually parting ways so that Balthazar could speak with Ursula, for a while at that point. And so it was that night. The days were getting longer, and the sky was a contemplative blue, faded somewhere in between the day and the void. They walked close enough for the sleeves of their shirts to brush against each other. Balthazar did not have to look down to know their steps were in time with each other.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Pedro smiled at the hills, somewhere in the direction where the sun had slipped below the horizon just moments before. “What more could you want from this?”

“It’s not the ocean,” Balthazar said. He meant the comment as a joke, some nostalgic throwback to when they’d been younger and more ambitious, but somehow it came out stilted, and Pedro shot an odd glance at him, inscrutable.

“How would you know if it’s any better?” Pedro said. “You’ve never been.”

“Exactly,” Balthazar said, making an effort to keep his voice light. “Though I suppose the ocean isn’t the most important part.”

“Oh?” Pedro raised an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”

Balthazar shrugged. “Spending time with you, I suppose, if we went together. I could do anything with you and not be bored, probably. Sleep. Sit in silence. Look out the window and watch grass grow.”

Pedro shot another strange look at him. “Is that so?”

“Don’t you think so?”

He cleared his throat. “No, I don’t doubt it.” They were inside the house, now, making their way up the top of the stairs. When they arrived at Pedro’s door, though, his hand froze on the doorknob, and Pedro turned to Balthazar, sheepish grin on his face. “You could sleep in my room tonight, if you wanted. We could do all those things you said. See if you’re right or not.”

Balthazar blinked in surprise. “Er – “

“Only if you wanted,” Pedro amended quickly. “Do – do you want to?”

“Yeah,” Balthazar said. His cheeks felt rather warm, for some reason. “Okay, sure, why not?”

They hadn’t slept in the same room since they were in the Fields, and that had been a requirement. This, here, was an invitation. A push and pull of wills. Or, more accurately, an occurrence. A happenstance rather than a conscious choice. Balthazar didn’t quite know what to make of that.

They brought over Balthazar’s blankets and pillows and used them, along with Pedro’s, to build something that vaguely resembled a fort, like the kind you saw in old movies for teenagers. Then they crawled into the fort, the sky still light outside, and lay on top of the piles of pillows they’d assembled, still fully clothed.

“I can’t tell if this was the best idea you’ve ever had or the worst,” Balthazar said, staring at the flimsy blanket roof above his head.

“Obviously, it’s the best. Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to build a pillow fort like in the movies.”

“What movies are _you_ watching?”

“Wow. What a jerk.”

Balthazar grinned. “Just saying.”

“Okay, sure.”

Pedro turned onto his side, toward Balthazar. Instinctively, Balthazar turned his head, their faces now inches away from each other.

“So what do we do now?” Pedro said, voice a near whisper.

“I dunno, what do people usually do with this type of thing?”

“What was on your list earlier?”

“That was not a very exciting list.”

“We could look out the window and watch grass grow, I think is what you said. Or we could sit in silence.”

“I’ve decided – this is a terrible plan.”

“Hey, this part was your idea. Just saying.”

“Listen, I didn’t actually expect you to take me seriously.”

“I’ll always take you seriously, Balthazar,” Pedro said, suddenly and uncharacteristically solemn.

Balthazar’s breath hitched in his throat before he could stop it. “I dunno about that.”

“I’m not joking.” Pedro’s expression softened. “I don’t want you to think I don’t listen, because I do. I listen to every single thing you say. Or I try to, anyway. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

That was a pretty high stake to claim. Somehow, Balthazar believed him.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said quietly. “I think it does.”

They didn’t say much after that, or if they did it wasn’t of any great importance. It didn’t matter much to Balthazar, really, if they said things or if they didn’t. He felt the same in Pedro’s presence, either way. In the morning, when they woke, their arms and legs pressing lightly together, he closed his eyes, and felt grateful.

He was grateful, most of all, that Pedro made time for him, though it hadn’t been something he’d actually asked of him.

Still, it was hard to ignore how, whenever Balthazar tried to turn the conversation toward the near future, Pedro inevitably steered it somewhere else.

Balthazar didn’t want to know why that was. He did know, though. He knew all too well.

There was no avoiding the truth that the new people _would_ be coming, however, and though they hadn’t been given specific numbers, it was widely speculated among Balthazar’s circle of friends that this year’s bus would contain Fields students. There were only a handful of places you could go to after you turned sixteen, so probability demanded that this was the case.

Perhaps part of what distinguished Balthazar’s friends from other groups, though there were certainly many other reasons, was that a disproportionate number of them had ties with people in the lower years. It might have been unusual for Pedro and Balthazar to be good friends with John, but Beatrice was also known to be very close to a girl in the year below them named Hero D.

In the days before that bus pulled in, Beatrice often fretted over whether Hero would be on it or not. There was no way to know, really, as communication with the homes – especially with one as disorganized as the Fields – was sparse. If Hero wasn’t coming to the Cottages, then there was no knowing if Beatrice would be able to contact her again. Even Ben seemed to realize that this wasn’t a subject he could mock Beatrice about.

Pedro, notably, remained quiet whenever the topic came up. On one occasion, Beatrice became so frustrated at his reticence that she threw up her hands and said, “You know, this conversation concerns you, too, Pedro. It’s not helping anyone for you to be sitting around, arms crossed and frowning like that. Isn’t your brother eligible this time around for moving to the Cottages?”

“It’s not helping anyone for you to be talking about it at all,” Pedro snapped back. Eyes flashing with silent anger, he slid his chair back so that it scraped loudly against the floor and left the room.

There was quiet for a few moments, and then Ben spoke up.

“Well done, Beatrice. Once again, you prove yourself remarkably talented at driving away our friends.”

Immediately, she turned upon him. “Excuse me? He drove himself away. Like I wasn’t making a perfectly reasonable point!”

As they went at it, Ursula turned to Balthazar and said quietly, “Should you…?”

Balthazar shook his head, and that was that. He didn’t go after Pedro.

Maybe in later years he would regret it. Not in this instance, specifically, but all the times he didn’t go after Pedro, didn’t talk it out with him when it was important. Right then, though, he only felt that it wasn’t his place to talk to Pedro about things he clearly didn’t want to talk about. He was very concerned about that during his years at the Cottages, what might be his place with regards to his friend and what might not be.

After that, Beatrice didn’t confront Pedro so directly again, though she did broach the subject a few times, presumably to see if he would join in, which of course he didn’t. In the meantime, they were swept up in the preparations for the new arrivals, cleaning up the newly vacant rooms of people who had signed up to be carers, making various repairs to the plumbing and such. Balthazar was busier than ever, sweeping out rooms and fixing leaks, so it wasn’t like he had much time to talk to Pedro anyway, even if he wanted to.

A handful of people – Balthazar and Beatrice included, Pedro not – agreed to greet the new students when they came. Beatrice was determined not to let them wait out in the rain, like Leo had done when they had arrived a year earlier, and Balthazar felt content to follow in her lead. And thus, when the bus finally screeched to a halt in front of the house and deposited its cargo of confused and displaced people in the yard, Beatrice immediately opened the door and leapt down the porch steps.

Ironically enough, it wasn’t raining, not even a little bit – the clouds had parted just in time to let a few rays of sunlight through – but it did make for a better visual when Beatrice finally caught sight of Hero among the crowd and embraced her with a muffled yell of delight.

The display of affection was definitely unusual, and Balthazar could see the strange looks of the new people as they stared at the scene while pretending they weren’t, but somehow, even as he followed in Beatrice’s wake, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Okay, Balthazar and I are going to show you around, but I really just need some time to wrap my head around the fact that you’re finally here,” Beatrice was saying as he approached. He hadn’t met Hero before, but he felt like he knew a lot from Beatrice’s descriptions. Of course, nothing had prepared him for how utterly charming she was in person. She smiled and laughed at all the right times, and seemed genuinely interested in everything Beatrice had to tell her about the Cottages.

Amidst the excited conversation, Balthazar spotted a lone boy, disconnected from any of the conversations currently happening, out of the corner of his eye. He was taller, and his hair worn slightly longer than the last time they’d met, but Balthazar reckoned he’d know that figure anywhere, even if they went another ten years without speaking. Quietly, he left Beatrice and Hero to themselves and made his way over.

“Hello, John,” Balthazar said to the boy.

“Balthazar.” His voice was stilted, painfully awkward. He seemed very fixated on something on the ground.

“He’s not with us right now, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Balthazar said.

The tension in John’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and he looked up with a tentative smile.

“It’s good to see you again,” Balthazar said honestly. “I didn’t know if we’d get the chance.”

“Likewise,” John replied, the corner of his mouth upturned. “Though ever since you left, you’ve missed out on quite a lot. So really, more your loss than mine.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes, quite the party back at the Fields,” John said. “They finally fixed the plumbing in the third floor bathroom. Oh, and we got new pencils. People were practically rioting up and down the streets.”

Balthazar grinned. “It really is great to have you here.”

“I’ll have to see it to believe it.” But John smiled back, and that was a start, wasn’t it? It was a good start.

“Come on,” Balthazar said. “We’re going to start showing everyone around.”

They rounded up the newcomers and, after guiding them around, helped them settle in, just the way the older ones before Beatrice and Balthazar had done for them a year ago. Hero and John, alongside a few others, were situated in a building neighboring Balthazar’s, the layout of the two almost identical. Beatrice invited them over, and soon they were all circled around the muted television and wrapped up in conversation.

Well. Most of them, anyway.

Being the person who sat between John and Pedro, the latter of whom had joined the gathering a bit late, made Balthazar the prime witness to their interactions, or lack thereof. John seemed to shrink in on himself the moment they’d all sat down, staring sullenly at his lap. Pedro, on the other hand, threw himself wholeheartedly into the fray, cracking jokes and laughing loudly at Ben’s anecdotes. Perhaps to anyone else, this would seem like nothing out of the ordinary. The different ways they were acting might not even look related. Pedro was naturally charismatic, after all, while John largely kept to himself. Unfortunately for Balthazar, he was not anyone else.

“You know, you don’t have to spend time with us if you don’t want to,” Balthazar said quietly to John, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one else was listening in. “Though, of course, you’re more than welcome to if you do.”

“Are you sure about that?” John said back with a derisive snort.

Beatrice was currently reprimanding Ben for a presumably illogical point he had made about mangoes. Pedro was trying to point out that none of them had ever had mangoes to begin with, his voice climbing in volume as the argument between Beatrice and Ben grew more heated. Ben was gesticulating wildly about, Balthazar assumed, mangoes.

Balthazar winced. “Very sure. They’re, uh, strong personalities. Takes time to get used to.”

“Am I not used to Pedro already?” John said, raising his eyebrow.

Balthazar frowned. “That’s not…”

“Balthazar.”

He looked over at Ursula, who had just said his name. “Hm?”

“Meg wants to go to a small town not too far from here,” she said, the corner of her mouth hitched up in a half-smile. “Says Robbie has something he wants to show her.”

“And…?”

“I think it would be nice if we could get a group to go,” Meg cut in from Ursula’s other side. “I mean, there would be something for all of us there, I figure, right?”

Balthazar took the suggestion into consideration. In the year that they’d been here, none of them had been off the grounds, not even to walk down to the nearby town, but the older ones – the more experienced ones – seemed to disappear on sometimes-days-long trips all the time. It was almost strange, honestly, that his circle of friends hadn’t attempted a similar endeavor yet.

Perhaps they had been waiting for someone to tell them that it was okay, that they were ready. But that was silly. There was no one at the Cottages to tell them that anything was or wasn’t okay.

“I might go, if the rest of you do,” Balthazar said. “But, uh, see if they’re keen first.”

In the end, they all seemed up for the idea. Even John admitted that the trip might be an entertaining diversion. They were quick to make the preparations, reserving two of the larger cars for the day, asking Keffers for permission – “you lot bothering me with this nonsense, there’s a _check-out book_ for a _reason_ ” – and persuading one of the girls who had a license to help Robbie drive them. Apparently, Robbie hadn’t been too pleased with Meg inviting her friends, but there were too many of them who wanted to go at that point, and when Ursula pointed out that there were almost ten people he had to refuse, he backed down. The date was set for the next week.

The night before the trip, Balthazar had dinner in the farmhouse as usual. It was their turn to cook, and he volunteered to stay back to wash the dishes. Pedro had left early, he presumed – he hadn’t been paying attention when he did – so he was prepared to make the trek back to the house by himself. By the time he did, though, he almost tripped down the porch steps. It was dark, and so he didn’t see that someone was sitting on the stairs.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry – “

“Balthazar?”

“Pedro?” Balthazar blinked into the night.

“Yeah, I just – come sit with me, will you?”

Balthazar sat next to Pedro. “Man, I keep on running into you, don’t I?”

Pedro laughed softly. “Literally.”

Balthazar was silent for a moment, squeezing his knees. Then, he looked over at Pedro, tentatively. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking. And it’s nice outside right now, isn’t it?”

A little warm for Balthazar’s tastes, but he decided to keep the thought to himself. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Oh, ha, ha.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nothing important. It’s just been a while, hasn’t it?”

Balthazar didn’t ask what he meant. He didn’t have to. “Sure.”

“I’ve been avoiding thinking about it for so long, because I didn’t think I had to, but now…”

“You probably should.” Balthazar paused. “He deserves it.”

Another sigh. “I suppose.”

“But…?”

“We’re just – not the same people anymore. Haven’t been for a long time, now, I think.”

“Does that matter?”

“Maybe?” Pedro groaned and ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”

Balthazar thought about it for a moment. He wasn’t sure if anything he might say could possibly be of use, but regardless, it would probably be a mistake to leave the silence this heavy. “I think you should try. See what happens. Who knows? He might surprise you. Trying to talk to him, at least, is better than pretending he doesn’t exist.”

“I’ll stop when he does,” Pedro muttered, but his tone sounded good-natured, and Balthazar could almost sense the way his shoulders relaxed.

“That’s not fair, and you know it,” Balthazar said.

“Yeah. Sorry.” Pedro grimaced. “You’re right.”

“Come on.” Balthazar stood up and turned back toward Pedro, offering his hand. “Let’s go on back, now. It’s dark.”

Pedro glanced toward the hand Balthazar proffered. It didn’t take him very long, in the end, to take it.

The next morning, they piled into the tired-looking cars they’d booked and set off on their way. Balthazar found himself, once again, between Pedro and John, in the backseat of the car. Ursula rode in the front seat next to Georgia, their driver. And, predictably, the car was filled with silence. Apparently it was an hour long drive. A long time, Balthazar thought, to be sitting here like this.

Ursula fumbled for the radio, left it on the first station; soon, there was silence plus a sugary pop song Balthazar doubted any of them had heard before.

“So, uh…” Ursula twisted around in her seat, probably in another attempt to alleviate the awkwardness. Balthazar thanked her silently for being a braver soul than he.

John was currently looking obstinately out the window, while Pedro was staring down at his hands. “Hm?” Balthazar said, feeling vaguely awkward that it fell to him to respond.

“What do you guys want to do, once we’re there?”

“Well, I reckon I have enough money for another cassette tape or two,” Balthazar said. “Or maybe I could possibly look into another book? Or something, I dunno. Didn’t really have much of a plan, honestly. Surely there’ll be something interesting.”

If he was going to be honest, he had no idea what to expect. At the Fields, they’d had a few lessons, mostly roleplaying scenarios, on how to behave in the “outside world” as their handlers had always referred to it, but he’d always had a sense that it was probably a lot more complicated than half-heartedly reading out the lines to a script and exchanging fake coins to signify some sort of transaction. It occurred to him, with a jolt, that this was the first time most of them – with the exception of Robbie and Georgia – would even be leaving the small bubble of their lives at the Cottages. They weren’t obligated to, though. If they wanted to, they could probably spend their whole lives without leaving it, all the way up until completion.

“You should look into getting some music books. You know, for the piano.”

The sound of Pedro’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “You think?” he managed to get out, still mildly surprised.

“Yeah, why not?” Pedro said, shrugging. “I mean, it’s the next best thing to getting an actual, proper music teacher, isn’t it?”

“Wait,” John said slowly, turning from the window to Balthazar. “You still play the piano?”

“Excessively,” Pedro said with a small laugh. “It’s the only thing you can hear in the farmhouse, most days. But no one minds, Balthazar, promise. You’re getting really good.”

“That’s great,” John said, shooting Balthazar a glance. “I’ve got to hear you play.”

“Yeah, man, give us a live concert sometime! I’ll make you posters. The mighty Balthazar. No one will want to miss out.”

“Balthazar, the mighty maestro,” John offered.

“Balthazar, the marvelous musician.”

“Balthazar, the magnificent minstrel.”

Ursula met Balthazar’s gaze and smiled.

Eventually, it seemed as if, to Pedro and John, Ursula and Balthazar had faded out of the picture. Balthazar felt content to lean back and let them go at it. They hadn’t seen each other, let alone spoken to one another, in over a year. This was the kind of reunion he didn’t need to participate in.

It was true that it wasn’t the way it used to be, he thought, not with a marked air of hesitation still coloring John’s words and Pedro’s unwillingness to leave safe conversation topics; but it had the potential of getting there. And that had to count for something.

They got to town relatively unscathed, and Georgia dropped them off on the sidewalk so she could go off to search for a parking spot. Soon after, Robbie deposited his passengers and followed her. They stood in a group for a few minutes, staring at the unfamiliar scenery dubiously and trying to figure out what the next move was supposed to be while loudly pretending they weren’t doing it. Balthazar felt a bit at a loss, as he knew the rest of them did, now that they were actually here. The people around them had their heads down, and clearly knew where they were going. Where did _they_ have to go?

“What are you lot doing still standing here?” Robbie said as he approached them, Georgia by his side. “Go on now.”

This seemed to galvanize the rest of them, and before Balthazar knew it, Beatrice and Ben were pulling Hero toward what looked like a department store. Ursula shot Balthazar an almost apologetic look and turned away to follow after them.

“And then there were three,” Pedro said with an awkward laugh.

Balthazar found the prospect of any one of them leaving rather dangerous. If they stayed together, of course, they might be subject to more of the same kind of awkwardness that had plagued them ever since John had arrived at the Cottages, but he didn’t want to think about what it would be like if he and Pedro were left alone – or, heaven forbid, if he left John and Pedro alone.

“Come on,” he told the others before either of them decided to leave. “I think we drove by a music store somewhere along the way.”

It took a bit of navigation through the unfamiliar streets – and a few instances of Pedro having to ask a harried-looking passerby where the right way to go was – but eventually, they found what they were looking for. It was a tiny thing, the music store, but as soon as Balthazar laid his eyes on it he fell in love with it, with its handsome red door and stunning window displays. In awe, he stepped up to one of the windows, which showcased a variety of guitars, and pressed his hands against the glass. Near the front, perched on its own little stand, was a ukulele, its tuning pegs gleaming softly in the dull light.

“Balthazar,” Pedro said from somewhere behind him, “it’s just like the one you had at the Fields.”

Silently, he nodded.

“You need to get it!” Pedro exclaimed, clapping his hands on Balthazar’s shoulders.

Heart pounding, his gaze flickered to the price tag. “I don’t have enough money,” he said faintly.

John stepped up next to him. “I’m sure if all three of us pooled our resources, we would be able to afford it.”

Briefly, they counted the money that they all had. It turned out that John and Pedro had just enough between the two of them to buy the instrument.

“Come on, John,” Pedro said with hushed excitement. “Let’s go buy it for Balthazar.”

“But then you guys won’t be able to buy anything for yourselves,” Balthazar protested. “If I just chipped in a bit…”

“Absolutely not.” John looked at him sternly. “We’re doing this for you, and you can’t stop us.” And, before Balthazar could say anything else, the two of them disappeared into the store.

Suppressing the urge to sigh a long sigh, Balthazar followed.

If he was impressed by the outside, he couldn’t even describe how he felt about the interior. It was everything he thought a music store would be like, and more. Boxes and boxes of records and cassette tapes, guitars hanging on the walls, glass cases that displayed instruments he hadn’t known existed. He couldn’t find the counter without stopping at everything interesting-looking along the way.

Eventually, he did make it back there, a lesson book in hand, just as Pedro was snapping a small case shut. “Here you go,” Pedro said, smiling widely as he swung the case off the counter and handed it to Balthazar. It was all he could do not to clutch it to his chest. What Pedro and John had just done for him… well, it meant much more than he could ever say to them. So he didn’t try, only smiled and murmured his thanks under his breath.

Once they were out of the store, John suggested that he find a bench somewhere and start learning the instrument. They found a stone overhang that they could all sit on, and as Balthazar slowly began to re-acquaint himself with the ukulele, John and Pedro talked. It was difficult for Balthazar not to become completely absorbed in what he was doing, but he forced himself to pay at least a little attention to the conversation, in case there was need for him to intervene.

They exchanged some pleasantries for a while, presumably encouraged by the shared task they had just performed for Balthazar’s sake. Eventually, there was quiet that settled over the conversation, not the kind that stifled it, but the kind that made it serious.

“What was it like, after we left?” Pedro said after a brief pause.

“Like nothing happened.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Nothing changed, really. Except…”

“Except?”

John sighed. “It was just lonely, after you were gone. I didn’t know anyone my age, like I knew you.”

Silence, for a bit.

“Knew?”

“A lot can change in a year, Pedro.”

“But it didn’t. Not for you.”

“Not at the Fields, no. As for me, how could I know about myself? You tell me, Pedro, have I changed?”

“I – I don’t know.”

“What, we’re _brothers_ , aren’t we? Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell?”

“Lay off, John.”

“… Sorry.”

“It’s been a long time. Is what I’m saying.”

John didn’t speak after that. Balthazar hazarded a glance at his face. He looked – not sad, per se, but pensive. Like he had something he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure if he should.

“Hey,” Pedro said. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“You never came to visit, like you said you might. You never wrote. I bet you didn’t even try.”

“John…”

“Why? Do you know how much it hurt, for you to abandon me like that?”

“I didn’t have a choice, did I? I had to leave. We all have to, in the end. We might as well get used to it.”

“But you could have stayed in touch. You could have at least tried.”

“You know no one stays in touch after they leave.”

“Who cares what anyone else does? What about what _you_ do? What about us?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yeah, I bet you tell that to yourself at night so you can sleep better.”

“I’m serious! It’s not – I’m not like you.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that you knew who you were. Even if the other kids gave you shit for it, you always knew who you were. And you still do. I don’t. So I have to care what other people do. I wouldn’t know what to do otherwise.”

A pause.

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah?” Pedro snorted. “And what do you know?”

“I know you changed your name to defend your friend. I know you listened to me, and that you backed off when I needed you to. And I know you didn’t have to be friends with me, or Balthazar, for that matter. You could have been friends with anyone. But you chose us, back then. _You_ chose _us_.”

“And what does any of that make me?”

“My brother. Isn’t that enough?”

More silence. And then –

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

The seriousness dissipated then, somewhere between the last word and a comment made by Pedro Balthazar didn’t catch, though he caught John’s laugh in response to it, the carefreeness of it, the sincerity. Balthazar’s fingers caught on a difficult passage in the lesson book, but he didn’t mind getting wrapped up in the music, now that the atmosphere genuinely felt lighter.

If Balthazar was being honest with himself, he felt better than he’d had in a very long time. He had something of his very own – his own ukulele, no less, of all possible possessions – that was no one else’s, and it had been thanks to Pedro and John themselves working together. More than that, he almost felt like they were back at the Fields – Pedro and John on good terms, just the three of them and no one else. He even felt like this trip had improved whatever had been going on between him and Pedro, enough to no longer feel like he was alone in the other’s presence, at the least.

Maybe his fears before John had arrived – that the brothers would spend the rest of their time at the Cottages avoiding each other, that Pedro would want to get even further from them and the past than he already was, that they would never be close again – had been for nothing. If that was the case, he was infinitely relieved.

Ursula and the others passed them, then, and then Ursula noticed that Balthazar had a ukulele, and he noticed that she had a new camera around her neck, and the reunion of the group exploded into a flurry of new conversations and exclamations. The words John and Pedro had been exchanging were swept away.

When they headed back to where they had originally been dropped off, Meg and Robbie were already there. It wasn’t until they were near that Balthazar realized she was crying, tracks of tears on her cheeks glistening in the gray daylight.

“What’s going on?” Beatrice demanded.

Robbie tried to reach an arm around Meg’s shoulders, but she screamed, “Don’t touch me!” and pushed him away.

“Meg…” Ursula tried, stepping closer to her. Meg turned away.

Beatrice turned to Robbie. “What did you do?”

“I wanted to make her happy,” Robbie said with a shrug. It was a very unhelpful answer.

“You probably ought to leave, for a bit,” Ben said, his face serious.

Robbie rolled his eyes. “This isn’t your business, is it?”

“Robbie, come on, give her some space, will you?” Pedro said. Though his voice was calm, his back was straight, and Balthazar recognized an echo of a challenge in his question.

Robbie’s nostrils flared, but he spun away and walked off without another word.

Everyone’s attention turned back to Meg. Eventually, with Ursula and Hero’s help, they were able to sit her down and calm her down enough for her to speak.

“He told me he was going to show me my possible.”

Some part inside of Balthazar went cold. This was the first time he’d heard the term explicitly in a public forum. Of course, there was whispers and hushed talk about it everywhere, there always was; but it was the kind of topic the handlers had never taught them about, and thus it was the kind of topic that was treated with special care.

The idea was that if you found your possible – the person you might have been modeled after – it would show you a glimpse of what you might have been like in a different universe. A glimpse of yourself, your soul. It might even be taken as evidence that you might have one. If any of them had even the slightest opportunity at discovering who their possible was… Well, it wasn’t to be taken lightly, that was for sure.

Ursula rubbed Meg’s back. “Go on,” she said quietly. And the whole story came spilling out.

“Robbie drove around here a few weeks back,” Meg stuttered out. “He saw someone in a department store who he said looked like me. I didn’t think – I should have. It was too convenient, wasn’t it? He knew I’ve always wanted to work in a department store. But have we ever known anyone who was able to find their possible? What if I was the first?”

“Meg…” Ursula said, her voice a whisper.

She took in a deep breath, collecting herself. When she spoke again, her voice did not tremble. “She did look like me. From a distance. And then I went up and talked to her, because – oh, I don’t know, I just wanted to be _sure_. Robbie didn’t want me to. But I did, and – there’s no way it could have been…”

Something inside Balthazar ached for Meg. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like, to be reminded so cruelly and so closely that you’d probably never be able to find even a clue of where you really came from.

The whole time, John had been standing behind everyone else, slightly apart. Now that everyone was quiet, his voice rang out into the silence, almost harsh-sounding, so that they all had to turn to look at him.

“I thought you realized,” he said. “I did, anyway. A long time ago.”

He wasn’t loud, not by any means. He was, in fact, calmer than anyone else present. But everyone heard him.

Pedro was the one to answer. “John, what are you talking about?”

There was a strange expression on John’s face. Balthazar had never seen it there before.

“Do you think there’s a chance we could have been modeled after someone like, well, anyone else here?” He gestured at the strangers that walked past. The people of the outside world, were the words he didn’t say. “There’s not a shot in hell. They don’t want us to be seen, so why would they use people that can be seen? I’ll tell you who they _really_ model us after, and then you don’t have to worry about who your ‘possible’ might be anymore.”

And that was when Balthazar realized what it was, in his eyes.

Pity.

“Convicts, criminals, junkies, whores,” John intoned, as if reciting a line he’d memorized from a textbook. “Trash. Rejects of the world. _That’s_ what we were modeled after.”

It hurt a little, honestly, to hear him say that, and to hear him say that with such calmness, such resignation. Like he’d believed in what he’d said for a very long time. Balthazar was stunned into speechlessness, at it all.

There were others present, though, who weren’t.

“John, what the hell?” Pedro said angrily. “Why would you say that? Now, of all times!”

John stared back at Pedro. “I’m only trying to help her feel better.”

Pedro barked out a laugh. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t have to ask why you’d say that. I know already. You can’t stand it, right? You can’t stand the thought that anyone might possibly be better than you in any way.”

There was surprise on John’s face, and a flash of hurt, that soon gave way to anger, in his eyes and in the set of his mouth. “How dare you suggest – “

“Why can’t you just accept the fact that you’re like the rest of us? Okay, fine, you’re not normal, you don’t think normally, we get it, but can’t you act like it, at least?”

“Normal?” John’s voice rose to a shout. “Says the boy who called me his brother when we can’t even have them! Or sisters, or parents, or _children_! Do you even know what it means to have a brother?”

At this point, the altercation had gotten so loud that the people passing by them were giving them strange looks. The rest of the group had nothing to say, could only look on with expressions of utter shock. Balthazar, for his part, got the sense that perhaps this was a conversation that should have happened in private; that, in fact, it was a mistake for anyone else to be listening in. And yet it felt like the whole world was.

Pedro was silent for a few moments, his fists clenching and unclenching, his gaze on the ground. Finally, he raised his eyes, and spoke.

“No. I don’t.”

John flinched backward, the expression on his face stricken, but before he could answer Pedro had already turned away. Balthazar looked around at everyone’s faces, and he could tell they were as much at a loss for words as he was. In a way, their collective silence was a bit of a relief, awful as it was, to him. It was not his fault, for once, that nothing was said or done. It was everyone’s.

No one tried to approach John or Pedro. They all just stood around, thrown off balance. Even when Robbie and Georgia came back with the cars, they all climbed in without saying anything, or without trying to. Balthazar’s limbs felt wooden, sitting there in the backseat between the two of them. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it, he told himself. He never quite figured out if he believed that.

Back at home, no one talked about how the trip went, even when people asked. Perhaps they should have. But perhaps it wouldn’t have made a difference, in the end.


	3. Part II part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> … and when he took hold of Pedro’s hand, he didn’t feel scared of the future. Maybe he should have been, but Pedro was his friend, and in that moment, that seemed like the most perfect, immutable truth in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay in this update; I have been traveling abroad for the past few weeks.
> 
> From henceforth, parts will be posted every 2-3 days, if all goes as planned.

_ii._

It took Ursula several weeks after her second donation before she felt well enough to leave her room. Balthazar wasn’t sure if he should let her, but he’d spent enough afternoons watching her stare out the window wordlessly to know how much she wanted to.

It was with a mixture of relief and mild anxiety, then, that Balthazar helped Ursula make her way down to the trail on Messina’s grounds. She was strong enough not to need crutches or similar support, but he found himself clutching her elbow more often than not, and the pace was slow. That part was fine. He had nowhere else to go that day. If nothing else, the forest was a calming place to take a walk.

“It’s a lovely day,” Ursula commented as they exited the building.

Balthazar peered at the low-hanging clouds above their heads doubtfully. “You and I have, uh, very different definitions of a lovely day.”

“Oh, lay off,” Ursula said. “Just because it’s overcast doesn’t mean it can’t be a lovely day. Who said weather was the only thing that _makes_ a lovely day?”

“Okay, fine,” he conceded. “Then tell me, what _does_ make a lovely day?”

He looked over at her, and she smiled. “Walking out here for the first time in a long time,” she said. “Feeling the wind on my face, listening to the birds sing. Getting to share it with you.” She lifted up her camera, pointed it at Balthazar, and pressed the shutter button. “Having the option to remember it all, in crystal clear detail.”

“I guess I don’t have permission to eradicate the picture you just took of me from existence,” Balthazar said.

She squeezed his elbow playfully. “You guess right. We should play a game.”

“What, like my wonderful companionship and razor-sharp wit aren’t entertaining enough for you?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah, exactly.” Ursula rolled her eyes. “Of course they are. But hasn’t it been long enough since we indulged in, you know, our more child-like impulses? When was the last time you felt like a child?”

“Not long ago enough,” Balthazar said.

“Wow, that settles it. My carer is very mean.”

“Hey, now,” Balthazar said, bumping his shoulder into hers. “Rude.”

“You were being rude first!” Ursula laughed, shaking her head. “Now play I Spy with me.”

“Of _all games_ – “

“Balthazar!”

“Okay, okay, fine,” he said. He couldn’t deny that he’d missed this, this feeling of laughter bubbling up in his throat, a smile on his face that wouldn’t quite go away. If that was what being a child meant, maybe it had been a long time, after all.

“Okay, then,” Ursula said. “I spy, with my little eye, something green.”

“The leaves on the trees.”

“Wow.” He didn’t have to look at her face to know how hard she would be pouting.

“Ursula, there’s nothing else that’s green out here.”

“You have a go at it, then, see how well _you_ do.”

“Okay, er…” Balthazar looked around for something good to latch onto. Unfortunately for the sake of the game, the trail they were on was surrounded by nothing but trees, and the recovery center was located on a patch of land that had always seemed to him like the very embodiment of ‘the middle of nowhere’. “I spy, with my little eye, something blue.”

“Wait, what? Where do you see anything – “ She looked down at herself, then burst into a grin. “My gown.”

Saying it had been a mistake, because saying ‘something blue’ reminded him of the full rhyme, and the full rhyme reminded him of something else entirely, something he hadn’t thought about in far too long.

“I spy, with my little eye,” Ursula said, “a man who is nostalgic for a past that never existed.”

Balthazar looked at her, startled.

“Come on, Balthazar,” she said, gently. “You don’t think I know you well enough by now to know you wear your heart on your sleeve?”

He shook his head, trying to clear his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey.” Balthazar let his gaze flicker to her. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning, either. The expression on her face was, in fact, very close to sympathy.

He exhaled. “Yeah?”

“It’s okay,” she said, reaching out and rubbing his arm. “But, uh, Balthazar? You can’t just remember the good parts, okay? We’ve talked about this. Nothing was ever perfect.”

He hummed in assent, turning back into position and offering his arm once more. When she took it, he thought it was with an air of relief.

“Something old, something new,” he said under his breath. “Something borrowed, something blue.”

“You’re not getting married.”

The wind rustled through the branches of the tree they passed under. Balthazar stopped walking and looked up at the trembling leaves. For a moment, he wondered what they would whisper, if they could. Then it passed, and he just felt vaguely foolish.

“No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

-

Balthazar had a ukulele when he was at the Fields.

It had a scuff mark on the back of it from where someone had kicked it long before it came into his possession, and it was always out of tune because back then he hadn’t known how to keep it in tune. The wood was a dark brown, and when he plucked on the strings hard enough they left an echo of an ache in his fingertips. He loved that ukulele very much. They didn’t tend to have things of their own, students at the fields, so the fact that he did have something made him feel different in a good way. That was a pretty rare feeling, back then. Not the feeling different part, because that happened to Balthazar a lot; but being proud of his differences, being proud of himself. It took him a long time to feel that way about the other parts of himself.

Of course, having something that no one else did meant that he had to keep it a secret. He didn’t keep it in his bedroom, first of all because throughout his years at the Fields he’d always shared his room with other people – the most he’d ever shared with was fifteen– and second because they changed bedroom assignments up every year, according to how old you were. In his later years, at around the age of fourteen or fifteen, he only had five roommates, but when he was younger there had been many more, and he had his ukulele when he was younger. So he kept his ukulele in a loose ceiling tile in one of the classrooms that he could reach if he stood on the tips of his toes upon a desk, and he was very careful not to take it out when there was anyone else around.

It was a wonder that he’d managed to have it at all. And, as many wonders at the Fields did for Balthazar, it began with John and Pedro.

When children were outside, they weren’t supposed to leave the designated playing area, which included a rusty swing set, a few slides, a small grassy field, and a dusty track. Back then, he and his friends hadn’t been terribly concerned with what they were supposed to do. Back then, what you were supposed to do was decided upon by the handlers, and the handlers’ punishments that came with not doing what you were supposed to do were relatively easily borne. For the most part, other people did stick to the strict rules, because a lot of people disliked the scoldings and the extra chores and the other penalties that came with breaking them. Some of them were scared of the handlers, even.

For Balthazar, John, and Pedro, they didn’t so much like the punishments as they thought them worth whatever mischief they got up to. It made them somewhat unpopular among the children who thought they should follow the rules no matter what – except for Pedro, who was usually friendly and energetic enough that people tended to want to be his friend anyway – but it didn’t matter so much, back then, what other people thought, because they had each other, and what they thought of each other wasn’t so bad all around.

They found the ukulele on an occasion when they were doing what they weren’t supposed to do, which was not only to leave the designated playing area but also to wander to the very edge of the property along the wire fence. Balthazar liked making these treks to the fence. He liked how the tall grass felt against his legs, and he liked that they felt free enough to say or do whatever they wanted out there.

On that sunny day, they were pretending to be explorers. John had taken up the persona of Ferdinand Magellan, who he learned in class that day had sailed around the whole wide world. Pedro was the son of a prince from an exotic country, run away from home to discover what life among the commoners was like. Balthazar was a tiger and spoke in growls.

They walked along the fence, searching the ground for buried treasure. When they went on adventures like this, they tended to come up empty. That day, though, John found a section of the fence where the bottom was loose. After a few minutes of evaluation, they determined that the hole in the fence was too small for any of them to crawl through. In a random burst of inspiration, Pedro knelt down on his knees, stuck his arm through the hole, and groped around in the tall grass.

After about fifteen seconds, he let out an exclamation of triumph. When he stood back up, he had something in his hands.

“For you,” he said to Balthazar, and handed over the thing.

Balthazar closely examined the object, dusting off some dirt.

“How did that get there?” John said, peering doubtfully at the hole in the fence.

Pedro shrugged. “Strange place for a thing to end up near, isn’t it?”

“It looks like a small guitar,” Balthazar said, forgetting that he was supposed to growl his words.

“I know what it is,” John said. “It’s a ukulele.”

“A uku-what?”

“Didn’t you always say you wanted to be a musician when you grew up, Balthazar?” Pedro said excitedly. “This is your chance to start! The humble beginnings of a boy who became a rock star.”

Balthazar ran his fingers lightly over the surface of the ukulele. He plucked at the strings, and fell in love instantly with how it sounded.

They couldn’t bring it back to the playing area immediately, so they put it back where it had come from, and that night they snuck out ten minutes after the handlers turned the lights off and smuggled it into a classroom, in which long ago they’d discovered a loose ceiling tile and had decided to reserve for an emergency. It was, they agreed, the sneakiest and best-planned operation ever carried out.

The ukulele came before Balthazar started playing the piano. He could thank Pedro for that one, too.

At the time, they were sharing a room. In fact, their beds were right next to each other. They had a habit of talking to each other long after they were supposed to be asleep, whispering so the other boys wouldn’t be disturbed, scooting to the edges of their beds so they could lean in as close as possible to talk about secret plans and secret adventures and secrets.

“I want to go to the ocean,” Pedro said. It was the way they started most nights, but Balthazar never could find it in himself to mind.

“One day,” Balthazar agreed.

“Us and John. It’ll be beautiful.”

“It’ll be something.”

“You know, there’s a piano in the handlers’ lounge,” Pedro said.

“Wait, what?” Balthazar blinked at the ceiling. “How do _you_ know?”

“Well, you know how in class Miss Imogen asked me to take some papers to admin?”

“Yeah?”

“I passed by the handler’s lounge, just because I could. I mean, she never asks me to leave class, right? And I wanted to see what it looked like. Well, I couldn’t go in, right, because there were people in there already. But I heard someone playing a piano, I swear I did, just like they do sometimes on the radio.”

Balthazar was aware, suddenly, of the beat of his heart, loud in his chest. “So what?”

“So,” Pedro said, “you should go in there. You should learn how to play.”

“How? How do I learn on my own? And how am I supposed to get in there? It’s the handlers’ lounge.” Balthazar wanted it more than anything.

“Don’t worry about that part. I’ll take care of it. Think about it! I bet they have books on the piano. You could learn. I know you could.”

So that was how Balthazar started sneaking into the handlers’ lounge to play the piano. There were books that they kept in a cardboard box at the foot of the piano, and he had to strain his eyes to look through them in the dark, but in a number of weeks, he was able to play simple scales and read very basic notes on the page. It took weeks, months, years for him to get better. He didn’t mind the time it took. He couldn’t imagine what else he would put it into.

He let Pedro and John listen to him practice, sometimes, when he pulled out his ukulele. They spent a lot of time together, so it wasn’t exactly an easy prospect to tell them to bugger off while he worked on it by himself. It made sense for practical reasons, as well, since it was safer to play when he had someone helping him look out for an approaching handler. Most of all, though, he just didn’t mind. It might have been strange that he didn’t, seeing as even at that age he cherished his privacy. But in those days, playing to Pedro and John was almost like playing to himself.

They spent a lot of afternoons like that, Balthazar sneaking out his ukulele to play in the tall grass, John and Pedro taking turns to keep look out and chatting idly and just enjoying the day and the music. They heard him learn his first song on the ukulele. They would suggest songs from the radio for him to try out, would ask him to play their favorites over and over for them. Sometimes, he’d put on small concerts for them, and they’d clap loudly and beg him for an encore, and it never failed to make him flush, in a good way.

John, in many ways, was just as enthusiastic about Balthazar’s music as Pedro was. In fact, he gave Balthazar more requests than Pedro did, and every time Balthazar got John’s songs right he’d stare at Balthazar with a rapturous look on his face. He clapped very hard, after every song. When Balthazar played a song John knew he got even more visibly into it, leaning in closer and watching the movements of Balthazar’s fingers up and down the fretboard carefully, humming along and sometimes even mouthing the words. Balthazar tried, sometimes, to get John to sing while he played, but John always refused, his cheeks darkening.

There was one John always requested for Balthazar to play and sing, no matter what. It was one of Balthazar’s favorites, too, and John said he liked his singing, so he tried extra hard to do right by the words.

“Why do you like to hear this one so much?” Balthazar asked, one afternoon when Pedro was suffering away at some punishment inside and they were alone. He let his fingers strum the strings idly, warming up to play the song.

John shrugged. “You just sing it really nicely.”

Balthazar smiled. “I’m not nearly as good as the original.”

“You are to me,” John said. John wasn’t the kind of person to give out praise lightly, and Balthazar could recognize that. Balthazar smiled again, wider.

“Okay, here we go,” he said. And then he started singing.

“ _Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high… And the dreams that you dreamed of once in a lullaby_ …”

Balthazar looked up in the middle of it, and was gratified to see John swaying along gently to the music, eyes closed and something almost resembling a smile on his lips.

“ _Oh, somewhere over the rainbow way up high… And the dream that you dare to, why oh why can't I?_ ”

He finished the song on a plaintive chord, and John didn’t clap, or say anything; they just sat there and enjoyed the brief silence.

It was John who broke it first. He shifted his weight, a little, and looked at Balthazar. “I think that’s why I like your music so much,” he said.

“And why’s that?”

“Because it makes me believe in a better place than this,” John said. “Because for just a little while, I don’t feel bad for wanting more.”

Balthazar stared back helplessly. He didn’t know how to answer a statement like that. What could he say that could possibly live up to the feelings his music apparently inspired? Hearing John say that, really, was everything Balthazar had ever wanted from playing music.

Finally, he reached out, and rested his hand on John’s knee. “We’ll go to the ocean one day,” he said.

Usually he didn’t say things like that to John, because John never seemed to believe him. This time, though, he looked straight into Balthazar’s eyes and said, “I know.”

For the briefest of moments, Balthazar was stricken, frozen speechless. Then it passed, and John’s mouth curved up into a half-smile. “I love your music,” he continued. And that was the end of it.

Balthazar loved his music, too. They all did, really. He should have known that it couldn’t last. Nothing any of them loved ever did, at a place like the Fields. It took years for him to get better at the piano and the ukulele, and it took years for them to find him out. But they did, eventually. They always did.

Balthazar was twelve, at the time. For the most part, he was good at avoiding trouble, either with the handlers or the other students. But his successes at avoiding trouble made him overconfident, and thus it made him dangerous to himself.

He learned this the hard way.

It started, as usual, with John and Pedro, who sat next to him at lunch time. John and Pedro had started a heated argument over Balthazar’s blueberry muffin, since they’d already finished theirs and Balthazar didn’t like blueberries. He was content to allow them to fight for a few minutes because it was amusing to see John countering Pedro’s pleas for full rights to the muffin with bitingly logical arguments, but after Pedro threatened to pour his orange juice on John’s head Balthazar gave in and used his plastic knife to cut the muffin in half. They made a big show of how unfair this was – “no fun, Balth, you never let us fight to the death for things” – but really, they knew from the beginning that this would be how it was going to end all along.

“You know, Balthazar,” Pedro said around a mouthful of blueberry muffin, “we haven’t heard you play the uke in a long time.”

“I really like it when you sing,” John said, using his napkin to wipe crumbs off of his fingers.

“You’re right,” Balthazar said thoughtfully. “Actually, I haven’t pulled it out in a long time.”

“We should try for it during recess this afternoon.” Pedro tilted his head in thought. “It’s summer, no one’s going to want to stay inside. They haven’t fixed the air conditioning in the rooms yet.”

“You say that like they’re going to fix the air conditioning at all,” Balthazar said, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” John said doubtfully. “You’ve never taken it out during the day, Balthazar, what if the handlers hear?”

“It’s fine,” Balthazar cut in. “I can do it.” And he believed it. He genuinely believed circumstance was on his side because he was too young to have learned yet that it never would be, not for someone like him.

Which was how, two hours later, he found himself on a desk with John and Pedro standing on the ground nearby, reaching for his ukulele, when a handler who had left his bag in the classroom opened the door and saw him.

All three of them were taken to administration. All three of them waited their turn to speak to the head of the Fields, Miss Violet, and all of them sat in sullen silence.

Balthazar was the last to go in to Miss Violet’s office. She sat at her desk with her arms crossed across her chest, her face betraying no hint of the punishment she was about to bestow upon him.

He’d been in this room his fair share of times. He’d never dreaded entering it this much before.

“Stanley J,” Miss Violet said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Yes, Miss Violet?” he said quietly. He didn’t bother correcting her.

“You understand that you and your friends, Peter D and John D, have been hiding a piece of contraband from outside the Fields in the building, which is clearly against the rules.”

“Yes, Miss Violet.”

“And you understand that we must confiscate the contraband.”

A pause.

“Yes, Miss Violet.”

“Then, do you understand,” Miss Violet said, carefully, “that Peter stole the contraband? Not only that, but he stole it from a _handler_?”

Balthazar looked up at her. His words froze up inside him; he could not speak.

Miss Violet sighed. An expression that might have been pity fluttered across her face.

“The three of you, I swear.” She shook her head. “Peter told me the whole story. It lines up with reports of a few missing items from a few years back. I suppose I needn’t tell you all the details, but it’s only fair that you know the ukulele was not the only thing that disappeared, back then. There was also a key to the handlers’ lounge.”

Balthazar felt sick to his stomach. He’d been in this office countless of times, had received cut meals and reduced privileges and hour-long scoldings and weeks of bathroom cleaning duty, but this was by far the worst punishment he’d ever received from Miss Violet. And she hadn’t even gotten to the punishment part yet.

Miss Violet must have sensed how he felt, because the hard line of her mouth softened a little. “He told me that he did it because he wanted to give you the chance to practice music. He told me you would like to be a musician. Is that right?”

Balthazar swallowed. “Yes, Miss Violet.”

“You know that you can’t do that, right, Stanley?” Miss Violet said, not unkindly. “You know that it is not feasible for you to grow up to be a musician? That the path of your existence has already been set for you?”

His throat felt dry. He nodded. Truthfully, he didn’t completely understand what she meant by that; at that age, they hadn’t yet been given the lessons and the long lectures telling them exactly what the paths of their lives were meant to be. He only knew, even if he didn’t know why, that she was right, that the truth of her words rang true in his bones. Even if he liked to believe otherwise, he’d known for a very long time now that becoming a musician was not a possibility, for someone like him - or, as he had heard the handlers refer to him and his peers in whispered conversations, something like him.

“Well.” Miss Violet leaned back in her chair. “Peter was adamant that he was entirely to blame for the theft, but it seems to me that all three of you conspired to keep the contraband all of these years. Peter will get two weeks of solitary confinement, and you and John will have no dinner and no recess for one week. Considering how long your little escapade went on for, the handler that Peter stole from wanted me to assign much more time to your sentences, but I don’t believe the intent was malicious, misguided as it was.”

This last statement was meant to be kind, Balthazar knew, or at least as kind as the handlers ever got. Still, unhappiness roiled around in his gut, and there wasn’t much he could do to still it.

Miss Violet fixed him with a long, piercing look until he squirmed in his seat and said, “Thank you, Miss Violet,” like he was supposed to.

“All right, off with you, then,” she said, and turned her attention back to the papers on her desk.

Balthazar took his leave and walked back to his room, and he sat on his bed and tried not to cry.

Pedro’s absence during the next two weeks was impossible to miss. Solitary confinement meant he was removed from class, from meal times with the rest of them, from the dorms. Throughout the years, they hadn’t always been assigned beds next to each other, but had always managed to make it happen anyway by trading spots with other boys. This meant that every time Balthazar went into their room now, every night before he fell asleep and every morning after he woke up, he was confronted with the emptiness of Pedro’s bed right next to him, the sheets still rumpled from the last time Pedro had slept in it.

Having to miss dinner would also have been easier to bear if Pedro was there. They’d dealt with this particular punishment enough to know how much to save from breakfast and lunch to make the loss of dinner bearable, and where to hide these food items through the day so that they wouldn’t be found out by the handlers. Whenever the three of them missed dinner, Pedro and Balthazar always gave up some of their food to John, who was younger and more prone to hunger. When it was just Balthazar giving John some of his food, though, he felt horrible knowing that it wasn’t going to be enough for John, and even more horrible knowing that John would never complain about it.

Even missing recess would have been fine, if Peter were there. Instead of recess, they were usually made to sit inside under the supervision of a handler and do extra schoolwork or straighten up a classroom. Though they weren’t allowed to talk, it was just comforting to know that you weren’t missing out on recess by yourself. Of course, with Pedro in solitary confinement, Balthazar had to go through it on his own, and since they tended to separate it by year John would be supervised by someone else.

To make up for this, Balthazar tried his best to make sure John was alone as little as possible when he could. He couldn’t play music for him anymore, but he could sing, and after dinner, when supervision was at its lightest, they’d sneak outside and sit with their backs to the wall of the complex and Balthazar would sing softly to John, and they’d cling to each other in the dark and feel a little less alone.

He surprised John one night with a blueberry muffin, a rare treat he’d managed to hide from him at breakfast until later. It wasn’t much at all, but it was about all that was within his power to do.

John took the muffin from him silently. Balthazar could see his bottom lip tremble.

“It’s okay, John,” Balthazar said, reaching out and rubbing at his shoulder.

“When’s he coming back?” John said wretchedly, looking at him with wide eyes.

“You know they said it’d be in two weeks,” Balthazar said, not sure if he believed himself.

“That’s not enough.” John closed his eyes and let his head roll back, hitting the wall. “It’s not enough.”

“I miss him too, John,” Balthazar said, hugging his knees to his chest. It was quiet after that, and heavy. They went back to their rooms soon after, and Balthazar found, like every other day of the week, sleep to be frustratingly elusive.

So, in summary, that first week was hard to bear. Arguably, though, the week after was one of the worst he’d ever had to endure, because his suffering was finished, but Pedro’s was not.

John and Balthazar didn’t talk about Pedro anymore, after that one day. It was easier that way. Balthazar didn’t have to share his food with John anymore, but sometimes he struggled not to. A week was enough time to make it feel like a habit. And he hated to see John quietly nibbling at his food, uncomplaining about the hunger Balthazar knew gnawed at John’s gut like it gnawed at his.

Some nights, John snuck into Balthazar’s room and burrowed under his covers. He didn’t say anything, but Balthazar knew it was because he couldn’t sleep. Whenever he spent the night with Balthazar, Balthazar sang his song to him, softly, voice barely above a whisper. Each time John said nothing, but sometimes, he smiled, and that was victory enough.

The Sunday after the two weeks were finished, Balthazar walked into the recreation room, and Pedro was sitting in a chair by the radio, his elbow resting on the table the radio was on and his head resting on his elbow.

He was the only one in there. Balthazar hadn’t known that he’d gotten out already.

“Pedro,” he said.

Pedro turned his gaze on him, and smiled. It was a tired smile, the kind of smile that hadn’t seen the light of day in a long time, but it was genuine, and it was his.

“Balthazar. This is the station you like, right?”

Balthazar pulled up a chair and sat next to Pedro.

“What was it like?”

Pedro shrugged. “I’m fine.” He smiled again, and this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “See? I’m fine.”

“Pedro…” Balthazar took a deep breath. He’d been thinking about to say for the past two weeks, when they finally got to see each other again, and he felt like he had a good plan. But knowing what you wanted to say didn’t make saying those things any easier. “Pedro, I’m sorry. For everything.”

“What for?” Pedro said, his voice hoarse.

“Just…” Misery felt thick in the back of his throat. “I hate that you stole for me. I hate that I made you feel like that was necessary.”

They didn’t say anything, for a bit. The sound of a commercial warbled softly from the radio’s speakers.

“I thought we didn’t care about the rules. I thought we weren’t like the others.”

“Pedro, this is more than just rules,” Balthazar said. “Sneaking off after hours, saving food from the cafeteria for later, that stuff doesn’t hurt anyone. But stealing from a handler? This is about doing what’s right.”

“I thought I was doing what was right,” Pedro said. He didn’t say it very loudly, but Balthazar still flinched. Pedro’s hand, resting on his knee, slowly tightened into a fist, and then relaxed. When he spoke again, his voice was back to a normal volume. “I thought… I thought making you happy was the right thing to do.”

Balthazar reached out tentatively, put his hand on Pedro’s shoulder, squeezed.

“Pedro,” he said, as seriously as he could, “there are other ways to make me happy.”

Pedro looked over at him. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t look as upset anymore. He looked hopeful.

“You don’t hate me, do you?” he said, his voice soft enough to be a whisper.

Balthazar squeezed again. “I’d never,” he said. “Not in a thousand years.”

The corner of Pedro’s mouth lifted up. “We don’t have nearly that long.”

Balthazar grinned and took his hand away. “Mm. Good point. The thought still counts.”

They settled into a silence that felt more comfortable than ever. The commercials had ended, and there was now a song with a tranquil piano part and hazy guitar chords playing through the room.

“You want to know something?” Balthazar said.

“What is it?”

“We’re gonna go to the ocean, one day,” Balthazar said. “Just remember that.”

Pedro smiled, soft, and small, and real.

“You know, there’s something I read about the other day,” he said. “This rhyme about what the bride should wear to her wedding. ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’. I don’t know why. It really stuck with me.”

“Blue is your favorite color. I’m not surprised.”

Pedro laughed. “I mean, it’s not just that. I was just thinking, well, maybe I’d like to get married one day. And the person I’m marrying would have to wear all that. It’s a weird thought.”

Balthazar thought about that for a few seconds. “And who would you like to get married to?”

“Well,” Pedro said, shrugging his shoulders, “you wouldn’t be a bad choice.”

“But don’t you marry someone that you love?”

“Are you saying I don’t love you?” Pedro tilted his head to the side, the corner of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile. “Balthazar. That wounds me.”

Balthazar felt his heart begin to pound a few beats faster in his chest. “No, but I mean – Pedro, do you even know what marriage is?”

“Two people like each other a lot, and then they promise to stay together for the rest of their lives,” Pedro said, smiling crookedly. “I mean, we’re basically already married, don’t you think?”

“No, but – “ Balthazar felt the sudden urge to laugh. Not because it was funny or anything, but because the situation just didn’t feel real. “It’s like – romantically. You know?”

“Oh.” Pedro sounded vaguely embarrassed, but not terribly so. “Okay, sorry, Balthazar, guess I can’t marry you, then. I just don’t see you like that.”

“It’s okay.” Balthazar knew that the proper response would probably be along the lines of ‘me neither’, or ‘thank goodness’. For some stupid reason, though, he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“So I guess I understand why it’s a husband and a wife, now,” Pedro said, tilting his head thoughtfully. “I never really knew until now why you don’t have two husbands, or two wives.”

“You could,” Balthazar said before he could stop himself.

“Really?” Pedro said, sounding surprised.

“I mean…” He could so easily back out now, but the look in Pedro’s eyes was so open, so honest, he couldn’t stop himself from continuing. “I think I’d want a husband one day.”

“Oh.”

Balthazar swallowed hard. “If that’s okay.”

Pedro’s eyes widened. “Balthazar, of course that’s okay! Why wouldn’t that be okay? You don’t need me to tell you that’s okay, right?”

“No,” Balthazar said, and though he was sitting down his knees still felt weak with relief. “I suppose I don’t.”

“Good.” Pedro stood up then and walked in front of Balthazar. He stuck his hand out. “We should head back, probably. I still need to break it to John that I’m out. Would jumping on his back from behind with no warning be too much, do you think?”

“Probably,” Balthazar said with a laugh, and when he took hold of Pedro’s hand, he didn’t feel scared of the future. Maybe he should have been – maybe he should have thought more about the fact that none of them would ever be able to have husbands or wives – but Pedro was his friend, and in that moment, that seemed like the most perfect, immutable truth in the world.

-

Ursula was an easy patient to care for. It was partly because they already knew each other so well, of course, but it was also the fact that she never demanded more than was necessary from Balthazar, or more than what he was capable of. All she asked for was his companionship, and he was glad to give it to her.

Sometimes, though, she asked things that felt like harder questions than they actually were.

“Do you still play your music, Balthazar?” she said one afternoon.

This was one of those times.

“Not really, I guess,” he said as casually as he could, shrugging his shoulders for emphasis.

“What’s stopping you?” she asked, softly.

He never had the time to, for one, or the resources. He didn’t have anyone who would listen to him.

He could have said any of those things, but when he opened his mouth to answer, all he said was, “I don’t know.”

“You probably have enough money to get another ukulele.” He could tell she was trying to put pressure on him, as understated as it was. “You could practice while you cared for me. I wouldn’t mind.”

There were a dozen things he could say to that, too. What he said instead of all of them was this –

“It wouldn’t feel right.”

“Ah,” Ursula said, sitting back and shooting him a look of careful appraisal. “I understand now.”

Balthazar didn’t question her. He didn’t doubt that she did.

“They’d want you to, I think,” she said carefully. “To continue, I mean. They’d really like that.”

Balthazar didn’t ask how she could know what the people he had tried his best not to think about in years would want, because he knew that she was right.

In a way, he was ashamed that he had refused to even think about it until she brought it up. They wouldn’t mind that it had taken him so long, though. That had never been the problem.

What was the problem, then? Was it really that it had been so long? Or was it just that playing it just reminded him of things he would never have again?

That thought felt so petty to him he felt like an idiot.

The next time he was at the store, he bought a ukulele, all with his own money. He brought it to Ursula, who ran her fingers over it in wonder, and he played chords he hadn’t thought he would remember. Music used to be so important to him, present through all the good and the bad parts of it. At some point, perhaps that had changed. Or perhaps there was a chance it had never quite gone away.

“When was the last time you played, Balthazar?” Ursula said.

“I don’t know.” He did. “Before I left the Cottages, probably.”

“Balthazar, that’s almost a decade.”

He laid the ukulele carefully in his lap. “I know.”

“You know everyone at the Cottages loved your music, right? Everyone knew you for it, even if it was the only thing they knew, and they loved it.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

His music had been how he’d met people, though, wasn’t it? There had been a time when he would play the music in his head for the people he cared about, and they would listen. It was long ago, but it had happened, and he couldn’t bring himself to deny that.

“Well, you want to know what I think?” Ursula said, boldly.

He let his breath out in a long exhale. “And what’s that?”

“I think it’s brave,” she said. “You learning music. Against all the odds, you did it, all by yourself. And it made some days that much more beautiful. The handlers would never understand, but we did. We all did.”

He looked up at her and let himself smile. Maybe once, in the past, he would have rejected a statement like that, would have thought it an exaggeration, giving him credit where he didn’t deserve it. He was older, now, though, and he understood some things his younger self never would.

“Is it brave now?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, firmly. “Yes, it absolutely is.”

-

They had meals in the farmhouse, mostly, and each house in the Cottages was responsible for cooking the food in a daily rotation that included an endless number of other chores. So this was mainly how Balthazar got to know people outside his little group. It happened slowly, to be sure, mostly because he wasn’t the kind of person to make friends quickly, but – perhaps because of sheer inevitability – it happened.

One afternoon, Balthazar entered the kitchen after the normal lunch time, expecting everyone to have already left. Instead of an empty room, however, he was confronted by a sole boy, washing dishes at the sink.

“Oh. Hello.”

The boy turned around, hands covered in soap, and smiled.

“Here for food?”

“Yeah,” Balthazar said awkwardly. “Missed the regular time, I know, but I’m holding out hope that there’s some stuff left.”

“You’re in luck,” the boy said, drying off his hands and turning to the stove. “Still got a whole batch of spaghetti left. I think we were going to try to leave it for dinner tonight, but no one’ll miss a bit of it gone. We’re going to make more, anyway.”

“Cool,” Balthazar said, for lack of anything better to say, and dropped down into a chair. He figured that such a move might lower the risk of further embarrassing himself.

“So what’s your name?” The boy set a plate of food down in front of him and pulled up a chair. “Don’t think I’ve caught it before.”

“Oh, uh, Balthazar.” He stuck out his hand. That was what people did when they met each other for the first time, right?

“Damien,” the other boy said. He took his hand and shook it once, twice. “Balthazar’s a cool name.”

“I try,” Balthazar said lightly, surprising a smile out of Damien.

“Wait, aren’t you the kid who’s always on the piano? You know, in the study?”

Balthazar spun some pasta around his fork. “Yeah, yeah, that’s probably me. I have a bit of an addiction. That’s, uh, actually why I missed lunch. I kind of get into a zone? I dunno. It’s weird.”

Damien laughed, open and genuine. “Well, you play great, from what I’ve heard,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Should give a concert sometime.”

“So I’ve heard,” Balthazar said, smiling tentatively back.

“Self-taught?”

“The only kind of taught there is, right?”

“Ha. Yeah, I feel that.” Damien nodded thoughtfully. “Hey, so I’ve really got to get back to work, but if you’re practicing sometime, could I come listen?”

Balthazar liked that. He liked that this boy he’d never talked to before would think to do something like ask his permission. So he nodded yes, and smiled back when Damien’s face burst into a grin, and tried to hide it the rest of the time he finished his spaghetti in case the other boy looked at him.

When he was finished, he contemplated the remains of his meal with some concentration before deciding the best course of action was probably to say something to Damien before he left. He picked the plate up and carried it over to the sink.

“Sorry to add to your load,” he said.

Damien turned and took the plate from Balthazar, his teeth flashing as he smiled. “It’s no trouble at all. Just a plate and a fork, right? Unless you somehow managed to use all of the kitchen’s available cutlery to eat just now.”

Balthazar laughed. “Unfortunately, or, well, I guess fortunately for you, not really my kind of thing, mass-cutlery-usage.”

Damien nodded seriously. “Yeah, you don’t seem like the serial fork-besmircher type. Though you never know. As they say, it’s always the quiet ones.”

“Me? Quiet?” Balthazar pressed a hand to his chest. “Never.”

Damien smiled again, softer. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Balthazar said, and, to his mild surprise, he felt his heart skip a beat.

Later that afternoon, Balthazar sat at his piano – he’d started referring to it in his head as ‘his’ months ago, and after the fact hadn’t quite been able to stop – his fingers moving across an often-practiced song. The door opened softly.

“Wow. It sounds even better in person.”

Balthazar smiled, still playing, and moved a little on the bench. “Should come sit here.”

“Yeah, don’t mind if I do.” A moment later, Damien sat down next to him, their legs pressing against each other. “What song are you playing?”

“Oh, it’s actually…” Balthazar’s fingers stuttered on the keys to a stop. “It’s actually something I’ve been working on. Like an, um, an original.”

“Wait, really?” Damien’s eyes widened. “It sounds amazing.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t know about that.” Balthazar looked away, fighting back a smile.

“Does it have words to it? A name, maybe?”

“ _It seems it’s about time these words were spoken..._ That’s about all I’ve got so far.” Balthazar shook his head with a laugh. “But nah, no name yet. The words are kind of in progress, I guess. I’m sort of writing it for someone I know? But, uh, I don’t know if I’ll ever show it to them.”

Damien whistled through his teeth. “You’re writing a song for someone, huh? They’re a lucky person.”

Balthazar let his fingers ghost over the chords, playing lightly enough that he could speak to Damien without raising his voice or getting distracted. “You reckon?”

“You should write me a song.”

“Oh.”

Damien laughed to himself, almost abashedly. “I’m sorry. We just met, and here I am, making awfully ridiculous demands of you already.”

“It’s fine,” Balthazar said. “You know, maybe I will, someday. If you’re lucky enough.”

Damien looked at him, then, a smile still lingering on his lips. “Yeah, if I’m lucky enough.”

They sat in silence for a while, Balthazar going through some other chord progressions and melodies, Damien seeming content with watching.

“You know what I think?” Damien said quietly.

“Hm?”

“You should play that song for whoever you wrote it for.”

“Oh, is that what you think?” Balthazar said, raising his eyebrows.

“It just seems a shame to let it go unheard.” Damien shrugged. “If someone wrote a song about me, I would want to hear it, for sure. Especially if it was as good as this one.”

Balthazar hummed in response.

“Well, you should think about it, at least,” Damien said, holding up his hands. “I don’t want to pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to.”

Balthazar stopped playing so he could look at Damien, _really_ look at him. The feeling in the other boy’s eyes seemed serious. Serious, and hopeful.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said. “I’ll think about it.”

That night, when he got into Ursula’s room, she squinted at him and said, “You’re smiling.”

He grabbed hold of the mug waiting for him on her nightstand. “What? Me? Never. I would never.”

She turned back to what she was doing – pasting pictures on her wall – though he didn’t miss the look she shot him before she did.

“Did you meet someone new?”

“What are you?” Balthazar said with disbelief. “How the hell can you possibly figure these things out?”

She turned her face toward him and smiled a sly smile. “Magic. Who is it?”

He thought about it for a few seconds, decided to hell with it, and gave in. “Damien. His name is Damien.”

“This Damien?” When he looked up, she was holding a picture of the exact boy he’d spent the afternoon with to her chest.

“How – “ he started, bewildered.

“I told you,” she said with a wink. “Magic. He’s nice.”

“Yeah.” He smiled into his hot chocolate. “He is.”

They kissed for the first time in the dark behind a shed stained with the rain of the day, he and Damien. He’d kissed boys before, done other things with them, so this wasn’t new. He didn’t need it to be. He liked the familiarity of someone’s lips on his, their hands on his waist, and the warmth that came with being close enough to another person to touch. It could be a comfort, sometimes. And Damien was a nice person to kiss because he smiled a lot, and because he listened to Balthazar play the piano like it was the only music that mattered, and because he listened to Balthazar talk the same exact way.

Some nights he had to cancel his hot chocolate plans with Ursula. She never complained, though she always received the news with a knowing twinkle in her eyes.

Damien’s bedroom, they discovered early on, had thin walls and no locks on the doors. It was a fine place to be a lot of the time, to be sure, and when Balthazar didn’t feel up to walking back to his own room Damien would pull his scratchy blanket over them, and they’d laugh at how it was so short it didn’t even cover their feet, and sometimes in the middle of the night Balthazar would press his cold toes to Damien’s legs and laugh when he flinched. But it was on the edge of the land, and sometimes they didn’t have enough patience to walk the distance.

In those cases, there was a shed – the same shed they’d first kissed behind – that was a notorious meeting spot for couples. They’d come into it very late at night or very early in the morning, when they knew no one else would be using it, and Damien hid an extra blanket he had in a corner of the place so that, after they tired of kissing and other things, they could lie down on a bale of hay until they felt saturated enough with contentment to leave each other’s company.

Sometimes, Balthazar felt strange, entering it or leaving it, mostly because he didn’t feel like he and Damien were in a couple. They never really talked about it. He was fine with it, honestly, with kissing-and-other-things with Damien and leaving it at that. Sometimes he felt strange that he was fine with it.

They never went to Balthazar’s room together.

During the day, he found himself spending more time with Damien, who was now a frequent audience member of his practice sessions. Balthazar played a lot of ukulele in his presence, as well, and though this could be mostly attributed to the fact that he’d taken up the habit of bringing it most anywhere around the place he appreciated that Damien listened to it just as much as his piano playing.

Once, Balthazar asked why he liked listening to his music so much, and Damien said, “Because it’s yours.” He didn’t know what to say, to that.

Another time, he invited Damien to meet the rest of his group in their common room. The television was on, but it also didn’t seem to be receiving any channels at the moment. Ben tried kicking at the static screen, to which Beatrice commented dryly that kicking things was a terrible way of fixing them. As they tried to figure out how to fix the television, Pedro came over to the chair Balthazar was in, perching on its armrest, and asked who Balthazar had with him. “Damien, my friend,” Balthazar said, gesturing to Damien sitting next to him on the ground. Damien looked up at him with a strange expression on his face, but Pedro didn’t seem to notice, and he started up a conversation with the both of them with gusto. Balthazar noticed.

That night, as Balthazar lay in Damien’s sweat-stained arms, the other boy whispered, “Who is it you wrote your song for?”

And Balthazar didn’t answer, because he knew Damien knew what he would say if he did.

There was a week when Damien set off on a road trip with some of his friends. “Going across the country,” Damien told him at breakfast, the morning he left. “As far as we can, anyway. Before it’s too late.”

He’d noticed that was a phrase a lot of the older people were concerned with. “Before it’s too late”. Of course, he knew why. It was hard to imagine he himself wouldn’t be when his time came. He just wondered how much someone could actually do if they didn’t know when “too late” might be.

A few days later, he sat at his piano, going through the usual scales, and thought about how lonely he felt. It wasn’t necessarily because he missed Damien himself, though he supposed he had to. It was the warmth Damien brought, the closeness. Right then, he didn’t really have that with anyone else.

The door behind him opened. His heart sped up for the one irrational second he thought it was Damien, and then it sped up a little bit more when he realized it wasn’t.

“Hey, Balthazar.”

Balthazar took his hands off the keys immediately and spun his head around.

“Pedro.”

Pedro smiled tentatively in the doorway. “Can I come in?”

Balthazar didn’t think, didn’t think about how it had been a while since he’d properly talked to Pedro, didn’t think about the peculiarity of his timing, didn’t think about how if it had been almost anyone else he would have to think even if this was Pedro’s first official time asking to listen to him practice, just moved over on the bench and said, “Yes.”

“So what are you playing? It sounded really good,” Pedro said as he sat down.

“Nothing important. Just something I’ve been working on. I’ve been working through some other songs, if you want to…?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He spent the next ten or fifteen minutes playing through songs he’d first heard on the radio and then worked on slowly by ear, pausing whenever Pedro made a sound of recognition or a comment about the arrangements. Sometimes he pointed out where the melody was a bit off from the original, or where a chord sounded particularly pleasing. It was different from letting Damien sit in on his practices, who mostly just listened, but he supposed that was to be expected. After all, he’d only ever had two people sit with him while he played the piano, and the two of them were not the same person by any stretch of the imagination.

“Wait, what’s this song?”

“Oh, it’s…” Balthazar stopped for a moment. “It’s ‘Let It Be’, a song by The Beatles. Pretty famous piano bit at the beginning of it, from what I know.”

“The Beatles,” Pedro said with a thoughtful nod. “I keep on hearing about them from you.”

“I’ve only mentioned them to you once before,” Balthazar pointed out.

“Yeah! Your cassette tapes!” Pedro lit up with the recollection. “You did promise to let me listen to them, didn’t you? But you haven’t followed up on that promise yet.”

If Balthazar remembered correctly, he had made no such promise. Also, there were quite a lot reasons why he hadn’t shown Pedro his tapes. Pedro distancing himself from the group after their ill-fated day trip, for one, his unwillingness to interact with anyone in their house, even Ben, Beatrice, and – perhaps especially – Balthazar himself. And Balthazar had been pretty occupied himself, as of late.

He chose not to speak about any of the thoughts that flashed through his head at Pedro’s words. He didn’t really feel up for confronting even the possibility of negativity from Pedro at the time.

“We can listen to them now, if you want,” Balthazar said.

They went back to Balthazar’s room. Balthazar crouched down on the floor to pop in one of his most played tapes, and soon his room was filled with the sound of guitar and harmonies.

“You know, I’ve never danced to anything before,” Pedro said from somewhere behind him.

Balthazar straightened and turned to face him. Pedro swayed back and forth to the music, his head tilted in concentration.

“This would be a good song to dance to,” Pedro mused. “A slow one though, I think.”

“You think?” Balthazar stepped up to him. “May I have this dance?”

Pedro snorted. “Oh, I see how it is.” He took Balthazar’s outstretched hand, and the music on the tape began to sing.

“ _There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed…_ ”

“You are garbage at this,” Balthazar commented.

“Like you’re any better,” Pedro scoffed. He smiled, though, almost fondly, and Balthazar was glad for it.

“I’ve seen the way they do it in the movies. You know, those American high school dance things? The girl has her arms around the boy’s neck, and he has his hands on her waist.”

“We’re both boys,” Pedro said. “And also not American.”

“Well. Just a thought.”

Pedro pulled his hands away from Balthazar’s and put them lightly on his sides. “So like this?”

Balthazar didn’t answer, just put his hands on Pedro’s shoulders, and smiled at how clichéd it all was.

They swayed like that for a bit in silence. Pedro’s hands were warm through the fabric of Balthazar’s sweater, and soothing, somehow. Balthazar couldn’t guess what Pedro was thinking about. For his part, he was listening to the lyrics of the song and trying to figure out if they meant anything to him.

“ _But of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares to you…”_

There was a knock on the door.

Abruptly, Pedro took his hands away and stepped back.

“Sorry,” he muttered, sticking his hands into his pockets. “I don’t…”

“It’s okay,” Balthazar said. He felt odd. That was the only way to describe it, like he was both warm and cold at the same time. He walked over to the door and opened it.

“Balthazar.”

“Damien,” Balthazar answered, surprised. “What are you – “

“Oh, it was only for a few days.” Damien cleared his throat. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you…”

“It’s okay,” Pedro said. “I was on my way out, anyway.” He smiled apologetically at Balthazar and left the room, carefully side-stepping Damien without looking at him.

“I’m sorry, I know we don’t… You’re usually practicing at this time, but you weren’t there, so I was just… wondering where you went off to.”

Balthazar hadn’t heard Damien sound so hesitant before. He kept on avoiding Balthazar’s gaze, looking down at the floor or somewhere into the room.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Balthazar said, awkwardly. “We can…?”

“No, it’s okay,” Damien said, shaking his head. “I had something I needed to tell you, but it can wait until tomorrow.”

“I’ll see you around, then?”

“Yeah.” Damien glanced up at him, then, and it sent a chill down Balthazar’s spine to see the look in his eyes.

He’d never seen the other boy so sad.

Before he could say anything else, though, Damien turned around and left.

Balthazar went over to his bed and lay down on it and closed his eyes, and he listened to the song that was still playing just in time to hear its ending, almost convincing himself it was in time to the beat of his heart.

“ _In my life, I love you more… In my life, I love you more._ ”

The next day, Balthazar and Damien met behind the shed. Rain fell in a light drizzle, not so heavy that they needed an umbrella or any other type of cover, but just enough for Balthazar to feel a bit misty. It was almost like the first time they’d ever met there, except this time Damien leaned against its wall with his arms crossed, and Balthazar didn’t think it would be right to ask if it was okay to kiss him.

“You know I like you, Balthazar.”

“I like you too.”

“I like you,” Damien said, eyes serious. “I really like you.”

Balthazar didn’t answer.

“I’m signing up to be a carer tomorrow. I’ve been here long enough.” Balthazar didn’t look at him. He sounded tired, mostly, and Balthazar didn’t want to look at the face that voice belonged to.

“Can we at least…”

Damien sighed. “No.”

Silence, then. Smothering silence.

“I’m sorry,” Balthazar said, strangely miserable. He didn’t know why he felt that way, didn’t know if he was even justified in feeling that way. He would feel angry at himself for feeling that way, if he had any other feelings left in him to do so.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Balthazar wrenched his gaze from the ground and up at Damien, who had a small, rueful smile on his face and sincerity in his eyes. Balthazar had always appreciated that about Damien, how visible his sincerity was, how permanent. Right in that moment, though, bearing witness to it just hurt.

“Would you ever write a song for me?”

Balthazar swallowed. “Maybe. If you’re lucky enough.”

Damien laughed softly, and Balthazar wanted to kick himself, it sounded so sad.

“I’m not the lucky one. I never was.”

He pushed himself off the wall and walked away. Balthazar stayed standing there for a while, collecting droplets of fine-misted water on his skin and wondering whether the moisture on his cheeks was all rain or not, because he didn’t know what was worse. And then he walked away too.

They didn’t say much that night in Ursula’s room. Balthazar felt content to enjoy the warmth of his drink, and the silence.

“We didn’t love each other,” he told Ursula after a long while.

She looked at him, long and hard. “It’s okay that you didn’t,” she said slowly, as if trying to find the right words to say. “You don’t have to find love now. I mean, we’re still so young.”

“I think he wanted to. And I think I didn’t let him, and he knew why I didn’t.”

A pause.

“You think you know what love is?”

Balthazar set his empty mug on Ursula’s nightstand and flung himself back so that he lay on his back on her floor, staring at the ceiling, both arms spread out on either side of him.

“Yeah. I reckon I do.”

He left Ursula’s room soon after that for his own. Before he could get there, though, Pedro opened the door to his room, poked his head out, and said, a bit incredulously, “Balthazar!”

He stopped in his tracks. “Pedro?”

“Sorry, this is so weird,” Pedro said. “I was actually just going to knock on your door. I, uh, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

He urged the sudden exhaustion down. This was a bad time for Pedro to be seeking advice from him, but like hell if Balthazar would ever admit that out loud. “And what’s that?”

“Well… Pedro rubbed the back of his head. “I heard about Damien.”

Of all the things he could have possibly said, Balthazar had probably expected that one the least. “That he’s leaving soon, you mean?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Pedro frowned. “I know people don’t usually make that big of a fuss out of one of us leaving the Cottages, but I just wanted to see if you were doing okay. I know – I know you care about him.”

 It was difficult, suddenly, to swallow. There was a lump in his throat that hadn’t been there before.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Balthazar said. He didn’t bother trying to smile, this time. There wasn’t any point. “I – thanks for asking. That means a lot.”

“Of course.” Pedro reached out and somewhat awkwardly clapped him on the shoulder. “If you need to talk about it…”

“It’s okay.” Even if Pedro was being so open about it, Balthazar knew he would never approach him about something like this, not in a thousand years, even if they did have that long. “Good night, Pedro.”

“Okay.” Pedro nodded once. “Good night.”

Balthazar went back to his room and did not think of anything else before he fell asleep. It was easier that way.

After that, Balthazar didn’t talk about Damien anymore. No one did. That was what happened when you left to be a carer. No one talked about you anymore. No one ever said why they didn’t, but Balthazar knew, deep down, that they didn’t want to think about all the ones who had left. They just wanted to forget.

There were a few others he saw in a similar way, during his time at the Cottages. He remembered all their names, kept them collected in his heart – Zeb, Fred, others. Sometimes it was a one-time kind of deal, hushed and heated until the next morning, when they’d part ways with a smile and never exchange more than a handful of sentences after the fact. Other times it felt almost proper, the way they always said you were supposed to do it with someone, exclusive, even, over a period of several weeks or months. Once or twice he found one he thought he might like to be in a couple with. It never quite happened, though, because they never talked about it, not really. He got the sense that for people like him, it was harder to talk about it openly. When the people involved with each other weren’t a boy and a girl respectively, there was the unspoken knowledge that it wasn’t going to be easy to be openly in a couple with the other person. Not that Balthazar would never want to be, or that he thought it would be too difficult for him to handle. He just wanted to find someone that would make the possible pain worth it.

In the meantime, he still found the closeness, the intimacy, comforting. And he couldn’t deny that sometimes he found the want – need – for it dizzying. Sometimes it scared him, almost, how much he wanted it. But, in that department, he didn’t usually make choices that he regretted.

As a rule, though, he tried not to share his music with them, whenever it was possible. It just made it harder, in a lot of ways, if he did.

Pedro didn’t usually come listen to him practice either. Balthazar supposed that made it easier too.

There was exactly one exception to this, and there would be times years after the fact that Balthazar would remember it with startling vividness, and his hands would tremble slightly at the memory of it. When that day started, though, Balthazar couldn’t know what would happen, could only assume that it was a day that would go like any other – idle chores in the morning, an afternoon of reading and piano practice, chatting with the others as he encountered them in due turn. The order of his day was like a book he’d read many times over, the pages worn with use, the words the same as they were the first time he’d read them. He liked the routine; he found the familiarity comforting.

In retrospect, he should have known what was coming. There had been an incident a few mornings before. It had seemed rather insignificant at the time, and he had in fact put it out of his mind after that, but re-examining everything leading up to that fateful, awful day, the warning signs had been there, loud and clear.

It started at breakfast. He was spooning something on his plate, pancakes or something similar. Something nudged him on the elbow. He turned, and gaped.

“John?”

He looked, admittedly, terrible. The circles under his eyes were dark and pronounced, and his hair was long and unruly. Balthazar hadn’t seen him around in a long while, so it was rather jarring to see him like this.

“Balthazar,” John said, his voice a half-whisper. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Yeah, sure.” They made their way to the dining table. “What is it?”

“It’s about Pedro,” John started.

It was at that time, of course, that Pedro himself came up to the table, and before Balthazar had any time to process the incredible phenomenon of John coming to talk to him about Pedro, Pedro said, “Good morning. What are you lot talking about?”

“Nothing important,” John muttered.

“Er,” Balthazar said uncertainly, casting a glance toward John.

“Can I sit here, then?” Pedro said. “You know, I’ve had a terrible habit of skipping breakfast these past few weeks? But I couldn’t help myself today. I mean, _pancakes_.”

“Yeah, sure.” Balthazar scooted his chair over to the side to make room. “Wait, is that, like, a core weakness of yours? If your enemies ever need to take you down, all they have to do is feed you pancakes.”

“On the contrary, Balthazar,” Pedro said. “Pancakes make me stronger.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” Balthazar said with a laugh. He turned toward John to apologize, maybe offer to talk later more privately, but the chair in front of him was empty. Somehow, John had already slipped away.

“What is it?” Pedro asked.

Balthazar frowned. “John – “

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” Pedro said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“You sure?”

“Not my business,” Pedro said. He ate another mouthful of his pancakes. “If I had a bottle of this syrup, honestly, I’d just pour it all over myself.”

Balthazar laughed, despite himself. “That’s gross.”

“Would be worth it.”

It was almost too easy, after that, to let himself be swept away by the conversation he and Pedro made. By the time breakfast was over, whatever vague worry he’d had about the whole incident was all but forgotten, in the face of Pedro’s presence.

The moment things changed, the moment he realized he should have paid more attention, shouldn’t have forgotten so easily, should have _cared_ , was when he sat at his piano, running through a song for what he told himself would be the last time. The door to the study crashed open, and he knew without turning around to see who it was that the pages of his day had been shuffled out of order.

“Balthazar.”

Abruptly, he brought his hands off the keys and spun around to see Pedro standing in the middle of the room, eyes wild with an emotion Balthazar didn’t understand, or at least didn’t want to.

“Pedro?”

“Balthazar,” he repeated.

Balthazar felt frozen to the piano bench, his breath caught somewhere in his throat. Part of him was wondering why this was happening yet another time, weeks and months of relatively harmless interaction, sometimes even silence, and then moments like this, Pedro so full of emotion, bursting of it, really, that apparently the only option was to ask Balthazar for advice, support, help, whatever. As soon as he thought it, though, he felt guilty for thinking it in the first place. Pedro valued their friendship for other things, right?

Right?

“Balthazar, I told her,” Pedro said, an edge of hysteria seeping into his voice. “I did what you told me to, I told her.”

“I – what?” Balthazar stuttered out, bewildered.

Pedro ran his hand through his hair, laughed mirthlessly. It was a sound that grated against Balthazar’s ears, his heart. “I said – I went up to her, and I said – I said to her, there’s something you should know, we’d look pretty good next to each other, wouldn’t we?”

His eyes were so wide, and Balthazar felt so sick.

“And what did she say?” He asked, terrified of the answer.

Pedro’s gaze met his. “She laughed.”

“Pedro – “

“How do you do it?” Pedro said, shaking his head with some awful facsimile of a smile on his face. “You don’t even talk to anyone or go out or _anything_ , and yet – tell me, Balthazar, what’s it like to never be alone?”

They were harmless enough questions, weren’t they? But by the end of it, Pedro’s breaths came out short and heavy, and Balthazar felt each one like an accusation.

“That’s not fair.” He hated himself, a little, for how his words came out like a whisper.

“I don’t get it. I don’t – I know who I – I know! And I don’t get shit! Not at the Fields, not here! But you…”

Pedro stopped talking, then, as if he realized he was crossing a line. As if he hadn’t crossed them all already.

There was so much Balthazar wanted to say, so much he wanted to say and so much he could hate himself for. That this wasn’t a conversation they should have when Pedro was so angry at himself, at Beatrice, at the world. That, really, this wasn’t a conversation they should ever have, but if they were going to have it they might as well wait until both of them had all the feelings drained out of their heart enough to pretend at rationality. That Pedro was the awful one for coming in here and saying these awful things, and the worst part was he didn’t _know_ the full extent of how awful he was being. That he hated how they always came back to this, even when Pedro promised that he could be better, that _they_ could be better, and he hated that Pedro knew him so well that he could make Balthazar feel like nothing with just the right words.

But perhaps what made him hate himself most of all was that he wanted to tell Pedro that just because Pedro wasn’t in a couple didn’t mean he was alone, not even the slightest bit, because he had his friends, he had so many friends, and Beatrice was still going to be his friend because she was just that kind of person, and if nothing else, if all else failed he’d still have Balthazar.

He had to know that part, right? Wasn’t that why this always happened?

“I’m sorry,” was the thing he said out loud instead of all the words spinning around his head like a hurricane.

“What for?” Pedro said with a bitter laugh.

_I’m sorry that you put on this act, like you know what you’re doing, like you’re always happy, like you don’t give a fuck what other people think, like you’re normal. I’m sorry that you know that that’s bollocks and you give all the fucks in the world anyway, I’m sorry that you don’t think your feelings are worth showing anyone except for the happy ones you don’t feel anyway, I’m sorry you keep them inside until you’re in so much pain you have no choice but to let them out on me. I’m sorry I’m the only person you can be like this around, and I’m sorry that I can’t deal with it anyway. I’m sorry we can only ever be honest to each other when the door’s closed. I’m sorry that you deserve better, and I’m sorry I can’t give it to you._

Whole books he could write, of things he would never say, or of the things he never should.

“I’m sorry,” Balthazar said, “that you will never have a single clue what I feel. You’ll never know a thing about how alone I feel, especially around you.”

Pedro didn’t say anything, only stared, and Balthazar couldn’t stop talking after that; he knew he was being just as unfair as Pedro had been, maybe even worse, but this was too much, and Pedro had to know that it was, for the both of them.

“But you know what? That’s fine. I’ve already told you that’s fine, isn’t it? It’s not about me.”

“So what is this about, then?” Pedro said, his voice hoarse.

“What’s it about?” Balthazar took a deep breath. “It’s about how you’ve distanced yourself, ever since that day trip we all went on, how sometimes it’s like we don’t even exist to you. It’s about how if Beatrice didn’t say yes to you, then you should just tell her how you feel, instead of laughing with her and then coming back to me – of all people – when it doesn’t work out.”

Pedro looked stricken. “How did you – “

He wasn’t finished. Now that he’d started, he found he couldn’t quite stop, the words pouring out of him like a torrent.

“It’s about how you pretend that everything is fine, and that you know what you’re doing, and that you can make everyone happy, especially yourself. Are you really ignoring everything that’s happening around you? Or can you, at least for once, can you acknowledge…”

“Acknowledge what?” There it was, a challenge in his voice. There were many things Balthazar could answer to that.

In the end, he went with the worst one he could think of.

“Can you acknowledge,” Balthazar said, slowly, “that what you’re accusing me of is exactly what you did to John? What you could do to anyone? What you could do to – to…”

Balthazar couldn’t finish the sentence.

There was silence for one long, terrible moment. Pedro opened his mouth as if to say something. And then he clenched his jaw and walked out of the room.

And Balthazar looked down at his shaking hands, his pulse thundering in his ears, because telling the truth was supposed to make you feel satisfied and light and free, but all it made him feel was empty as a desert.

-

When Ursula got the news for her third donation, Balthazar took her to the ocean, because she said she’d never gone, and he just couldn’t abide by that.

He parked the car in an empty parking lot and helped Ursula from the passenger seat, keeping hold of her arm as they made their slow way down the sandy path that led to the shore. She was strong enough to walk on her own, but she’d told him before that she liked being able to lean on him, so he let her until her feet hit the sand, and then he watched as she took her first unsteady steps closer to the ocean.

When she was close enough, she took off her shoes and stuffed her socks inside of them. Then she walked closer to where the sea lapped at the shore and dipped a single foot into the water.

“How is it?” he called to her.

“Very wet,” she yelled back.

Later, after Ursula had had her fill of the sea, they sat close enough to the water for it to occasionally brush against their toes. Occasionally, she lifted up her camera to take a picture, but for the most part it stayed still in her lap.

“I want to move here,” Ursula said. “I want to build a house here and never leave.”

“I don’t think the sand would be great support for a house.”

“The tide would probably pull all my hard work away.”

“It always does, doesn’t it?” Balthazar said quietly.

Ursula didn’t answer for a bit. She threaded her fingers through some sand, lifted her hand, watched as the wind carried away the grains from her palm.

“They say it gets easier, the more times you do it,” she said. “But it doesn’t. It’s just more time you don’t know…”

Balthazar knew what she was talking about. He couldn’t answer, though, not really. The course of their lives had been so similar, and yet there was exactly one experience Ursula was living that he hadn’t. His time would come, though. It always did, for people like them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I) is John's favorite song, and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5CjaqZb5nM) is the Beatles song that was danced to.


	4. Part III part i - The Worst Thing I Ever Did

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You never lost me.”
> 
> The words came out involuntarily, an instinctual reflex, as easy as a breath. Balthazar couldn’t stop himself from saying it, the truth that sounded so simple and yet never was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Companion gifset](http://douchenuts.tumblr.com/post/147759534557/is-it-the-right-word-were-going-to-the-ocean) by Crystal.

**[Part III – The Worst Thing I Ever Did](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WAoMnoKUDk) **

_“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go...”_

-

_i._

Hospital coffee was never anything to write home about, but it seemed on this particular morning it tasted especially bitter on Balthazar’s tongue.

He’d turned in all the paperwork already. It was usually at this point that he relaxed a little, maybe went on a short drive to clear his head. At this point, past all the forms and right before the donors went in for their operations, there wasn’t much more he could do to help his donors, so why should he have to worry? Whatever was going to happen would happen.

But it was Ursula’s third donation, and he couldn’t ignore that. Donors always completed on the fourth, without fail. If they even got that far.

“You have that face on again,” Ursula murmured.

“What face?” Balthazar said into his coffee.

“The one where you act – very poorly, I might add – like you’re not thinking about all the ways something could go wrong.”

Balthazar swallowed. “I’d never.”

“What was it you said to me once?” Ursula smiled weakly. Probably just tired. The donation was scheduled early this morning. “Us Fields folk, we’re fighters, aren’t we?”

Balthazar cracked a smile he barely felt. “Right.”

Ursula reached out and covered his hand with hers. “You’ve done this before. You can do it again.”

Sometimes, Balthazar felt as if they were playing the wrong roles. She’d always been a source of comfort and support for him, for as long as he’d known her, and if your carer had those qualities, there wasn’t much more you could ask for. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure if he could give her anything that quite matched up to what she’d given him.

The door opened, then, and the moment was broken. Balthazar stepped back as a small entourage of nurses and orderlies filed in. Quietly, he slipped out and dutifully made his way toward the waiting room. At this point, it was the only place for him, and the only thing he could do was to wait. He leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the flickering fluorescent lights, and thought about what Ursula said. All things considered, he wasn’t quite sure he could say he agreed with what she’d implied. It never got easier, not in this line of work. You just got better at pretending that it did.

But perhaps that was something she’d known, after all.

-

Balthazar had thought about the possibility of encountering Pedro after their row with a quiet sort of dread, but it turned out he didn’t have to. They didn’t see each other for the rest of the day, or all of the next, either.

It was impossible to deny that the confrontation – it had been more than that, he knew; it had been two trains doomed to collide, a disaster in the most catastrophic of senses; it had been, in every sense of the word, a _fight_ – was having a significant effect on his ability to think clearly. The night it happened and the night after that, he quietly told Ursula that he needed some time to himself, and instead of meeting her for hot chocolate he lay on his bed, staring at the abstract patterns in the wood of his slanted ceiling and failing at not thinking.

There were some things he shouldn’t have said to Pedro. That much was clear. There were probably some things he should have said instead of the words he’d used, but he couldn’t figure out what they should have been. Should he have offered support, understanding for the pain of Beatrice’s rejection? Told him that the pain Pedro felt was the pain in Balthazar’s heart every day? Should he have gone after Pedro after he left and begged for forgiveness?

Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

He felt so shaken up on the inside that it didn’t even occur to him that no one else would know what was happening until he entered the company of people who weren’t Pedro. People would ask him how his day was, and all he would have to do was smile and say, “good,” and they’d believe him. How easy it was to pretend that nothing had happened, and how difficult it was all at once.

Maybe the reason why no one ever pressed the issue was because they were the same way. Maybe everyone wanted to believe everyone else was doing okay, because under the surface no one was.

It was ridiculous for him to project his emotions on other people, he knew. Still, it would explain a lot.

When he finally did see Pedro again, it was during lunchtime. At that point, seeing Pedro standing next to the stove and scooping food calmly onto his plate, Balthazar realized with a lurch of his gut that this was the first time in two days he’d seen Pedro at all, let alone while eating.

In this kind of situation, he was probably obligated to say something. They were still friends, right? After a few seconds of indecision, “doing the right thing” won out over “avoiding all my problems”, so Balthazar walked up to Pedro and knocked his elbow into his arm.

“Hello, Balthazar,” Pedro said with a polite smile. “Am I in your way?”

“No, no, finished eating, about to head out,” Balthazar said quickly. “I just – wanted to ask… Well, I just wanted to ask how you’re doing. Is all.”

“I’m doing fine.” Pedro shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I – “ Balthazar rubbed his arm, suddenly doubtful that this conversation should be happening at all. “Do you – “

“No.”

Pedro’s voice was firm. His smile was tight.

Balthazar swallowed. “Oh. See you around, then.”

“Yeah.” Pedro turned away from him. “See you around.”

It stung, his reticence. It stung all the more to know he probably deserved it.

Ursula knocked on his door that evening.

“I know you need some space,” Ursula said. “But I’m pretty sure denying yourself my hot chocolate is a self-punishment you don’t deserve.”

“Them be fighting words,” Balthazar said, and let her in. He took took the mug she offered to him gratefully.

They talked quietly about the past few days, Balthazar expressing his regret that he hadn’t talked to Ursula in a while, Ursula responding with a roll of her eyes.

“I have other friends besides you, you know,” she said.

“I never would have guessed.”

“Shush, you. Anyway, as I was saying, I actually walked to town with Hero and Meg yesterday. You should go, if you have the time, it was really quite lovely. With Pedro, maybe?”

“No,” Balthazar said. “Not with Pedro.”

Ursula raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I…” It felt strange for Ursula to not know what had happened between him and Pedro. The incident had affected him so profoundly, and he usually told Ursula so much about himself, that he’d almost forgotten he hadn’t told her yet. But what did he expect? She couldn’t read minds, as easy as that would make it.

“Balthazar?”

Then again, he supposed it wasn’t too late to change her lack of knowledge, in this case.

“Well…” He took a deep breath. “I got into a bit of a thing with Pedro a few days back, and…”

“A thing.”

“A fight,” Balthazar said. “It was a fight.” The word tasted bitter on his tongue.

“And?” Ursula pressed.

“It – “ He paused, took a breath, another. “I don’t know. It wasn’t pretty. And I don’t – I don’t know where we stand.”

“What happened?” Ursula said gently. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Balthazar shook his head. “He came in while I was practicing, and he said he’d done what I told him to do. Tell the person he liked how he felt, anyway. I guess it didn’t go well. And I guess he blamed me, in a way.”

“Did he – “

“No, he didn’t say,” Balthazar said, suddenly and inexplicably miserable. “But I could tell.”

“And then?”

“Well, I guess I was just tired.”

“Tired of what?”

Tired of Pedro only coming to him when things go wrong. Tired of never knowing the right words to say to him. Tired of saying things to him and hearing him say things that just _hurt_.

But Balthazar never told Pedro how much it hurt, so really, was it Pedro’s fault, in the end?

“I don’t know,” Balthazar said, looking down at his hands. “I was just tired. I am just tired.”

He expected Ursula to respond to that, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached her arm out and wrapped it around his shoulders, and he felt like it was an embrace he didn’t deserve but he accepted it anyway, because it felt good to be embraced by a friend, and because otherwise he’d probably just fall apart.

He didn’t cry. He felt like he should. Maybe he just didn’t know how.

Telling Ursula did make it easier, in a way, but it was still difficult. When he and Peter were in the same room, they barely spoke a word to one another, yet Balthazar couldn’t stop himself from frequenting glances over in his direction, even though he knew it wasn’t fair of him. It was impossible, after all, to ignore Pedro’s presence, as much as he wanted to.

Once, when they were watching a movie on the grainy television screen with a handful of their other friends, the whole group went into uproar at a plot twist in which the protagonist’s brother turned out to be the villain the whole time.

“Oh, come on, you can’t tell me that didn’t completely come out from nowhere,” Ben said to Balthazar, who hadn’t reacted.

Balthazar shrugged. “I dunno. Men were always deceivers, and all that. Was it really all that surprising?”

He could feel Pedro’s eyes on him at that, and resolutely refused to look back.

He was tired of that, too, tired of Pedro being angry at him, but never actually talking to him about it. Well, he wasn’t going to be the one to start a conversation, if Pedro was going to be so stubborn about it. He didn’t care, either, if anyone else could tell what was going on between them. It’s not like they’d say anything if they did.

He fell into the habit of making tea on his own. Sometimes, he’d tag along with Ursula and Hero and listen in on their quiet talks about the books they’d read and the places they wanted to go, but for the most part he preferred to be on his own. He’d never been one for prolonged exposure to others’ company, of course, but in those days solitude could be incredibly refreshing. He’d get wrapped up in his own thoughts for hours and he never tired of imagining a world in which it was possible to turn the music in his heart into the music you heard on the radio, a world in which the grass stayed green year round and telling the truth was always easy.

One afternoon, he entered the kitchen with the intent of making a cup of tea for himself, and encountered, instead of emptiness, a tall, dark-haired boy sitting at the table and staring out the window.

Balthazar poured water into the kettle, careful to include just enough for two. The other boy showed no sign that he was aware of Balthazar’s presence.

Even so, he did reach out for the cup of tea Balthazar placed in front of him, and didn’t shy away when Balthazar sat in the chair across from him.

“Haven’t seen you around lately,” Balthazar said as he stirred sugar into his tea. “Are you doing well?”

The other boy did not respond for a while, only sipped at his tea, his expression blank.

“What do you care?” John answered finally, his voice a gray monotone.

He could speak for hours about the years of friendship they’d built at the Fields. He could speak of all the songs he used to sing for John because he asked, all the times John snuck into Balthazar and Pedro’s room at night because he couldn’t sleep. He could speak of the one time he ever saw John cry, and how they sat hip to hip outside in the dark, and Pedro and Balthazar each held one of John’s hands until his trembling shoulders stilled against theirs.

He didn’t think John would believe him, though. Maybe he would get angry, even.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead.                                                

John snorted, a little derisive noise in the back of his throat. “What do _you_ have to be sorry for?”

“I should have at least tried.”

At last, John looked at him. There was something in his gaze that cracked Balthazar’s heart a little, something nameless.

“I haven’t exactly made it easy, have I?” he said softly.

Almost involuntarily, Balthazar’s grip around his cup relaxed. He hadn’t even noticed how tightly he’d been holding it to begin with.

“Neither have I,” Balthazar answered, looking down at the table.

“You shouldn’t have to feel guilty over something that’s not your fault.” Here, John rolled his eyes. “You’ve been busy, so have I.”

 _Then whose fault are we talking about?_ Balthazar asked John silently, who did not answer.

“What’ve you been up to?” Balthazar said out loud.

John shrugged.

“You’re still welcome to hang out with us. You know. If you’d like.”

“Don’t lie.”

Balthazar felt his face pull into a frown. “I’m not – “

“Just because you don’t know that you’re lying doesn’t mean that you’re not.” John sighed deeply through his nose. “It’s okay, though. I appreciate the offer. Null as it is.”

Balthazar pursed his lips. “I…”

John shook his head and pushed away from the table, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. “Thanks for the tea, Balthazar.”

“We should talk again,” Balthazar said.

John froze at that, his hand on the back of his chair, and he turned to him with a look of surprise that he couldn’t quite seem to hide, though a few seconds later his expression once again settled into blankness.

“Maybe,” he said, and Balthazar thought he could detect a shade of sincerity in his voice.

And then he left the room, and Balthazar finished his cooling tea on his own.

The problem with living at the Cottages, Balthazar was beginning to realize, was that no one wanted to talk about things openly. You had to guess a lot of the time what someone else meant. You had to think a lot about what you said before you said it. There were rules to conversations, rules to living, rules to everything, but no one had ever actually told them to him explicitly, and after a year and a half of living here he wasn’t even sure if he knew all of them. Even he was part of it. Many of his most candid conversations had taken place in private, with Ursula or with Pedro or someone else from a distant memory.

When he’d first arrived at the Cottages, he’d taken note of all the closed doors. It hadn’t occurred to him that his might be closed, too.

Though he did manage to talk to John a bit more regularly after that. Sometimes they had tea, and sometimes they finished their chores together. He made several attempts to apologize for not making the effort to reach out to him before, but John always cut him off before he could finish. So that was okay, or at least something John wanted to put behind them. Which just made what Balthazar actually wanted to talk to him about feel more pressing, the more he put it off.

Finally, one afternoon after a long minute of silence over their tea, Balthazar gave in and said, “You haven’t talked to Pedro lately, have you?”

John’s gaze turned to him quickly. “Don’t ask me that,” he snapped, then looked down resolutely at his cup.

“John – “

“You know what the answer is.”

Balthazar sighed. He supposed he did, at that.

“I’m – “

“He’s not worth your apologies.”

Balthazar looked at John, startled. His knuckles were white from how hard he had his hand in a fist.

“What about you?” John said, almost accusingly. “Have you talked to him?”

He took in a long breath. “It’s a long story.”

“Try me.”

Balthazar thought about it for a moment. What was the best way of putting it?

“The last time we talked… well. Talking’s not the right word, not really. But it was a few weeks back, and we said some stuff – heat of the moment – didn’t go over too well. Haven’t talked since, I guess. Dunno if I should. He’s been pretty clear about how he feels without saying anything, so I guess he doesn’t really need to. And I guess I shouldn’t, either.”

He’d been staring at his hands as he said all of this, trying to piece together the truth in the least offensive way possible, trying not to hate the way he stumbled over his own sentences, but when he looked up at John, he had the brief, unsettling impression that his efforts hadn’t worked. It was impossible to discern what the expression on his face meant – it had been for a long time now – but for a moment, Balthazar saw the narrowed set of John’s eyes, and the crease between his brows and the trembling in his fingers, and he was scared.

And then, in the span of a few seconds, John’s face unwrinkled into now-familiar blankness, and the moment passed.

“Do you still play your ukulele, Balthazar?” John said.

“Oh. Uh, yeah.” Balthazar shrugged. “Don’t know if anyone bothers listening anymore, though.”

“Yeah,” John said, leaning back in his chair. “That’s what I thought.”

They didn’t speak much, after that. Balthazar didn’t ask for John’s reasons.

It occurred to him, suddenly, that it was entirely possible he was the only person speaking to John at the present moment. That John might not have any other acquaintances to his name, let alone friends. Were they friends? Balthazar couldn’t even know that for sure.

And what did all of that mean? Should he be concerned? Did he have a right to be?

Before he could figure anything out, though, John stood up abruptly from the table, murmuring his good byes and dumping his cup into the sink. It was unsettling, to say the least, that he didn’t have an answer to those questions.

It wasn’t like he could consult Ursula, either. Even if she also didn’t have answers, talking to her always made him feel better. Ever since he’d declined hot chocolate on those few nights, though, she’d started cancelling their nightly meetings increasingly frequently. She’d gotten very close to Hero and Meg, he knew, so it was hard to begrudge her. And he didn’t mind keeping to himself. It just bothered him a bit, was all, that now he seemed further away from the Cottages than ever before.

He worked well on his own, though. The solitude wasn’t the hard part about being alone.

There was a rainy afternoon during which no one else wanted to work outside, so, again, he was on his own. Balthazar didn’t mind it. He had a decent coat with a hood, and he liked how his hands felt after working outside in the rain for a while, the chill in his damp fingers an oddly thrilling sensation. Long after everyone else he had been working with on repairs for one of the sheds had gone, he was still there.

“Balthazar.”

He whirled around at the sound of his name, startled at the sudden image of a boy he knew well in front of him, no jacket on, the rain soaking his shirt and plastering his hair to his pale forehead.

“Pedro.”

“We need to talk.”

“What are you doing?” Balthazar said, blinking the relentless rain away. “You could catch your death.”

“I let Beatrice borrow my coat earlier.” Pedro stuck his hands into his pockets almost sheepishly. “I’m fine. Let’s talk out here.”

“We should at least – ” Balthazar turned to open the door to the shed.

“Balthazar, it’s fine.” Was it just him, or did Pedro seem embarrassed for some reason?

“Pedro, you know we can’t catch pneumonia,” Balthazar said, refusing to stop. “And if you ever do, it’s not going to be my fault. Come on.”

Eventually, despite Pedro’s weak protests Balthazar managed to get him to agree to go into the shed. It was only after they were both safely inside, the most prominent signs of the weather conditions outside being the soft persistent tapping on the roof and a persistent drip of water in the corner of the room, that he realized the possible reason for Pedro’s strange attitude – the shed that he’d been working on was the shed he’d once kissed a boy in, once kissed several boys in. It was _that_ shed. It was infamous.

Well, it shouldn’t matter what it was. If Pedro wanted a conversation, then Balthazar didn’t want him to get sick over it. That was basic common sense, right? Especially for people like them.

“So, uh, what do you want to talk about?” Balthazar said, taking off his coat and shaking the cold droplets off the sleeves.

Pedro avoided his gaze, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides.

“Okay. Cool. So what I’m wondering,” Balthazar said, shifting uncomfortably, “is why you want to talk now. You’ve had your chance for weeks.”

“I’m not the only one who’s been avoiding people, Balthazar,” Pedro said.

“That’s not the point.”

“No, the point is that I’m tired of you sending me these loaded looks across a room, saying all this cryptic bullshit that no one else gets but that you _know_ I understand. I’m sick of it, Balthazar.”

Balthazar didn’t know what to say. His mind was unhelpfully blank.

“Come on,” Pedro said, an expression close to exasperation flitting across his face.

“We don’t have to talk about it right now. Or ever, really.”

“Yeah, Balthazar. We do. Fuck, I can’t do this for much longer, can I?” Pedro’s breath whistled through his teeth in a sharp, restrained exhale. “You don’t get to accuse me of all these – _things_ and then never bring it up with me again. You said it all in the first place. Well, now we’re going to talk about it, Balthazar, and I hope you’re ready.”

Silence. Balthazar’s heart felt too big for his chest, or perhaps too small. It was difficult to look into Pedro’s eyes, impossible. Instead, he focused on the droplets of water that beaded on his temples and rolled slowly down the side of his face, his neck, disappearing below the collar of his shirt.

 “ _Fuck_.” Pedro ran a hand through his wet hair, his face painfully agitated. “I’m messing it up already, aren’t I? I was going to lead with an apology.”

“First class apology, there.”

“I’m sorry,” Pedro said wearily.

It didn’t seem like he was. But what did Balthazar know, really, about how Pedro felt?

“It sounded bad, what I said earlier,” Pedro began, haltingly. “I guess I meant that I’m sick of knowing that you’re upset, even if other people can’t see it, and it’s all because of me. I’m tired of knowing it’s all my fault.”

Balthazar almost wanted to laugh. How many conversations had he had with Pedro lately that he’d wished were over before they began?

“Pedro – “

“No, Balthazar, let me say this.” At last Pedro raised his gaze to meet his, and there was anger in his eyes, and pain and guilt, and a dozen other feelings Balthazar thought he could identify but didn’t want to. “I’ve thought a lot about the last time we talked. Believe me, I really have. It’s – it’s the only thing I think about, most days. I think about everything I said, and everything you said, and what was right or wrong. But mostly I just think about what your voice sounded like, and how your face looked when I left the room.” He took in a shaky breath. “It almost doesn’t matter who was right or wrong, what was fair. I’ve hurt you so many times before, I know. But I didn’t even think I was capable of messing things up as badly as I did.”

Balthazar was aware, suddenly, of how hard his heart was beating, how insistent his pulse throbbed in his eardrums. How difficult it was becoming to breathe.

 “Even so. You _were_ right. I know that now. And that matters. It matters that I can’t be honest until the worst of times.”

It was warm in the shed, warm and humid. Balthazar felt damp in all the corners and crevices of his body, damp and hot and cold all at once. It smelled of rain and wet hay.

“I just –“ Pedro spread out his hands helplessly. “I hate it. I hate acting like we’ve not been friends for more than half of our lives. I hate not being close to you. I hate feeling like I’ve lost you.”

“You never lost me.”

The words came out involuntarily, an instinctual reflex, as easy as a breath. Balthazar couldn’t stop himself from saying it, the truth that sounded so simple and yet never was.

Pedro’s arms dropped to his sides. Balthazar noticed, then, how tired he looked, how dark the skin under his eyes really were, how gravity itself seemed to pull down the corners of his mouth. It hurt, a little, knowing the reason why Pedro had lost sleep.

“Do you really mean it?”

Pedro didn’t even sound hopeful, as he might have, once. He just sounded small.

Balthazar shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts and his heart. This always happened, didn’t it? Pedro always made him want to forget why he’d been angry at him in the first place. It seemed effortless, on Pedro’s part, how he knocked Balthazar off balance like this. He probably didn’t even know the effect he had on Balthazar, most of the time. That had always been the worst part.

It wasn’t worth it anymore, to be angry at Pedro. It never had been, really.

“Yeah,” he said, and he was tired too. “Despite everything, I guess I do.”

He looked at Pedro, whose mouth was slightly open in wonder. As if in a trance, the other boy stepped toward him, close enough so that there were mere inches of space separating them.

“I want to make things okay between us again,” Pedro said quietly. He was close enough Balthazar could feel his ragged breaths against his skin.

Balthazar closed his eyes. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t answer, just like he wanted to. But he knew what the right thing to do was, and it didn’t matter what he wanted.

“You should say that to John.”

When Balthazar opened his eyes again, Pedro had taken a step backward, his expression replaced with utter shock.

“I don’t – I can’t – “

Balthazar wanted to sleep. He felt so tired.

“Can you promise me that you’ll try, at least?”

“I can’t.”

Balthazar shook his head. “Pedro. Please.”

Something strange flickered across Pedro’s face. “Balthazar,” he said.

“I could forgive you a thousand times over.”

Pedro’s eyes widened.

“And I have,” Balthazar said, the words heavy in his mouth. “You know I have. But how do I know that any of those times matter if you don’t do this?”

“They do matter.” Pedro lifted his arm as if to reach for something, but after a few seconds he seemed to think better of it, and let it drop back down.

“Fine,” Balthazar said, mostly because he was tired, but also because he just missed Pedro. It was true. He missed him more than he could have said or known before this moment. “But – just think about it, okay? You owe it to him.”

Pedro exhaled. “I don’t owe him shit.”

He was tired of fighting. He probably should have said more, did more. He was tired.

“Okay,” he said. “We can stop talking about it today, if you’d like. But this isn’t over.”

“What more is there to talk about?” Pedro said, frowning.

Everything, Balthazar wanted to say. Nothing at all.

“You can’t just apologize once and expect everything to be okay again.” He swallowed hard past the invisible lump in his throat. “That’s not how it works.”

“It’s not like you’ve ever been all that concerned with that, though, yeah?” Pedro retorted.

Balthazar’s head was starting to hurt. Was it the humidity? The tension that wouldn’t seem to leave Pedro’s shoulders no matter what Balthazar said or did? “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean…” Pedro ran his hand through his hair with a grimace. “I dunno. Just – how does it work, then? I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Well, I don’t know either,” Balthazar said, sudden irritation shooting through him. “Talk it out, maybe? Continue the conversation? Compromise and communicate like actual human beings?”

The last question came out louder than he intended. His words left a strange silence in their wake.

“Are we?” Pedro said.

Some part inside of Balthazar deflated. “I don’t know.”

They stood there for a short while, Balthazar looking anywhere but Pedro, feeling the other boy’s gaze stuck on him like glue. They were only a few short steps away from each other, but Balthazar had never felt so far away.

“Okay, look here,” Pedro said abruptly. “I fucked up, yeah, there’s no way around it. But if we – if we continue this, it can’t just be me begging for your forgiveness. You have to listen to me. You have to let me in.”

Balthazar stayed silent.

“And – “ Something like pain pushed his eyebrows together. “You need to _talk_ to me. You can’t just – you can’t just _say_ things at me and then – silence. I can’t take that, Balthazar. I can’t take it. And I know you can’t, either. You’re just better at hiding it.”

There was something in his voice, something that touched a part deep inside Balthazar and twisted at it – something cracked, something vulnerable. He wanted to mend it. But how could he when he didn’t even know what it was?

“Yeah.” He just wanted this conversation to be over. “I know.”

Air whooshed out between Pedro’s teeth, as if he’d been holding his breath. “Okay.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good.”

“You have to, too.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

Pedro looked up from his feet, then, and smiled a crooked smile.

“Are we good, then?”

Despite himself, Balthazar could feel relief starting to creep through his bloodstream. Maybe they were, and maybe they weren’t. Balthazar’s head was too scattered to properly answer that question. But they could at least pretend they were, and for them that had always been more important.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

They left the shed. At some point when they were in there the stormy weather had halted, and the sun started to peek out from behind the clouds on their way back.

“Pretty day,” Pedro commented.

“Not as pretty as me,” Balthazar said.

“Only in your dreams,” Pedro said, but he laughed, and Balthazar was glad to put everything behind them, to just forget what they’d said and done to each other. When he lay on his bed that night, staring at the ceiling, the smell of warm rain lingering in his nostrils, he thought about that laugh, and smiled.

Pedro knocked on his door the next morning. It was the sound that woke him up, actually, and when he stumbled out of bed, bleary-eyed and only half-awake, to open the door and see Pedro standing as casually as he could in his doorway, he couldn’t help but realize, something deep in his gut twinging before he could stop it, that this was the first time this had ever happened.

“Pedro,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “Good morning. Sorry I’m not – “

Pedro waved his hand dismissively, like it didn’t matter to him a bit that Balthazar was not in any way currently resembling a functioning person. “Morning. I know it’s kind of early, but I was wondering if you wanted to go down to town with me? I mean, I woke up feeling like a walk, and, well, I figured I could use the company. And we could. You know. Talk about stuff.”

Balthazar blinked. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, sure. But – “

Pedro frowned. “What?”

“Coffee, first? Please?”

His shoulders visibly relaxed. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Head down to the farmhouse, and all that. I can just - ?”

“I’ll give you a knock when I’m ready,” Balthazar said with a nod.

“All right, cool,” Pedro said, flashing a quick smile. “Looking forward to it.”

They were on their way half an hour and two – maybe three – cups of coffee later. Town was, at most, a twenty minute walk, which went by amiably enough, if a bit quietly. Pedro kept a calculated distance between them, his hands in his pockets. It was hard not to notice the uncertainty, or the hope. Pedro was the kind of person whose emotions had a significant effect on the environment around them, and Balthazar was the kind of person who noticed. In his presence, Pedro could easily make an overcast day feel abundant with sunshine, or a bright morning weep with imaginary rain. Right then, though, it mostly just felt like them and the world, the sky pale with low-hanging clouds and soft light.

It was the first time Balthazar had gone down to the town nearby, and Ursula was right. Lovely was the only way to describe it, this small sleepy town that could have belonged on the glossy pages of a tabloid. Rows of small, evenly spaced houses with clean porches and large windows huddled together on either side of the wide road, splashes of vibrant color present in carefully arranged flowers and hand painted signs. Occasionally, a bird flew above their heads, letting loose a peal of song, but for the most part it was quiet, and peaceful.

They crossed a narrow wooden bridge over a softly gurgling stream, and for a snatch of a moment, walking a few steps behind Pedro over the water’s incessant motion, he felt a powerful and unexplainable sense of nostalgia. It was like in a past life or a half-forgotten dream, he had crossed over a bridge following a boy who was his friend, but they actually belonged in the town or wherever it was they were. They’d go to school every day except for weekends, talking and laughing and sometimes singing silly songs, and the future would be uncertain but hopeful. They’d be secure in the knowledge that one day they would be leading quiet and happy lives, perhaps not together but certainly not alone.

Then he stepped off the bridge and the feeling passed, as if he had woken up suddenly from a deep sleep, but traces of it were left, hints of an existence he might have known in another universe and that he couldn’t ever have in this one. The thought might have made him sad if it hadn’t been for Pedro, who sometimes looked back at him with a smile, and he figured maybe a universe with Pedro’s smile in it wasn’t a bad universe to live in, after all.

“You okay?” Pedro said when he caught up to him, letting his elbow knock lightly against Balthazar’s.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I dunno.” Pedro paused. “You seemed sad there, for a moment.”

It was gratifying, in a way, to know Pedro was paying attention. Even so, sad wasn’t the word for it. Nostalgic, perhaps? Was it possible to be nostalgic for a past you’d never known?

“Just wondering when we’re finally going to make up our minds and choose a place to eat,” Balthazar answered lightly. “I’m starving.”

“Oh, don’t say that. Think of the children!”

“What children?”

“All of them,” Pedro said, but he couldn’t keep a straight face, and they burst into helpless laughter.

Eventually, they went into the first café they spotted and sat by the window. After they placed their orders, they sat in a silence that almost resembled comfort. The view from the window was mesmerizing, a small slice of narrow spaces between houses and painted picket fences that was only part of a bigger picture. Balthazar couldn’t stop staring.

“I’ve been thinking a lot.”

Balthazar’s gaze flickered from the window to Pedro.

Pedro cleared his throat. “About what you said. I think I told you already, but. It’s worth repeating.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Pedro answered with an almost nervous laugh. “Like, you know, actual proper thought. I think it helped, talking yesterday, to clear my head. I mean, I’d already been mulling it over for a while, you know? But it’s easier to think it through when you’re not actively trying to be angry.”

“And you were actively trying to be angry at me, were you.”

 “Not actively, I guess,” Pedro said, shrugging. “But I was angry. Not at you, maybe. Actually, I think I was mostly angry at myself. Still am, I suppose. But getting rid of that even a little helps you see things better, right?”

Balthazar nodded. “And?”

“I mean, I guess first of all I noticed that you were right. I don’t mean about everything you said that one time, but. Before. About how when you tell someone how you feel, it hurts a lot for a little while, but that’s better than not knowing. It was – well, I’m not going to lie, it felt like shit to have her laugh at me like that. I guess that must have been part of the reason I’ve – you know – these past few weeks. But I think in the middle of it I didn’t realize that I’d stopped feeling shitty about _her_ , and it was more…”

Balthazar rose an eyebrow. “More what?”

Pedro shook his head. “The point is, you were right about that. I was too blind to notice in the midst of everything that was happening, but it’s true. I mean, does it still hurt?”

“You _have_ been in love with her for three years,” Balthazar said.

Pedro winced. “Something like that. So yeah, it hurts. But there’s some comfort in knowing that you at least tried. I mean, I guess no matter what I did she wasn’t going to like me back, and at least I know that now. If I hadn’t said anything I’d be stuck on it forever.”

The food came then, interrupting the conversation for a few seconds. Balthazar cut at his food, mulling over the words that had just been said, the best way to respond.

“I’m glad it worked out in the end,” he said finally.

“But it was more than that, wasn’t it?” Pedro continued, leaning forward across the table. “I’ve just been a terrible friend, haven’t I?”

“You’ve already said that to me before,” Balthazar pointed out, waving his fork vaguely for emphasis. “And anyway, I don’t know. I was being a bit harsh, y’know? I didn’t have to put it that way to get my point across.”

“No, but Balthazar – “

“It’s all right, Pedro. I know I was out of line.”

“Balth – “

“It’s okay,” Balthazar insisted. He didn’t know why he was suddenly so adamant about this, but he couldn’t stop himself, either. “We can just drop it.”

“No, we can’t,” Pedro said forcefully. “For fuck’s sake, Balthazar, I’m trying to apologize here.”

“For what? I wasn’t fair to you.”

“But I wasn’t fair to you first!” Pedro said, gesturing wildly. “You had a point, a really good point, and I thought about it _so much_. I take and I take from you, and yet you never expect anything in return. And I just – I want you to know that I don’t want it to be that way. Maybe that’s the first step to trying to make this better.”

“Look,” Balthazar said, rubbing at his eyes. “I just want to move past this, okay? We had a fight. There, I said it. And it was pretty bad, I can say that too. But how are we going to move on if we keep on talking about it? It doesn’t matter anymore, what I said. It never did.”

“Balthazar. You literally said yesterday…”

“Haven’t we talked enough?” Balthazar said, wearily. “Can’t we just go back to being friends?”

Pedro seemed to sag at that. Balthazar didn’t know why he would ever feel that way.

“We’re already friends, aren’t we?” Pedro said. He sounded almost doubtful, and Balthazar decided he hated the fact that he’d ever given Pedro a reason to sound like that.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said, trying for a smile. “We’re already friends.”

“Can I tell you something?” Pedro said.

“What is it?”

“I missed you.” He looked away, almost bashfully.

Balthazar swallowed hard. “You don’t have to anymore.”

Pedro glanced up at him. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Balthazar said, and made himself smile again.

“Okay.” Pedro leaned back in his chair, and the expression on his face turned mischievous. “Then can I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

“If we’re friends again, can you pay for my meal?” Pedro’s grin widened.

“You fiend,” Balthazar said, but he smiled in response, and this time it felt real.

They walked back to the Cottages about an hour before noon, the sky even lighter than before. Sometimes, the clouds would move along enough for a gap to let the weak light shine through. The brief glimpses of sun bathed the green fields in golden brightness, and looking over the infinite plains made him feel like maybe everything would turn out to be okay between them, after all.

For once, that feeling seemed as if it was there to stay. It lingered even when the days stretched on by, warm and slow in his gut. Balthazar had felt out of sort for so long, to have his head straight now made him feel like he could do just about anything, with anyone. He no longer dreaded being in the same room as Pedro. In fact, more often than not he found himself looking forward to it. He got back into the swing of nightly conversations over hot chocolate with Ursula, except for the most part he had no sad feelings to report, only interesting books he’d read and good songs he’d heard.

He practiced his music more than ever. Balthazar soon got into the habit of bringing his ukulele just about everywhere when he wasn’t doing chores. That was one of the points that stood the Cottages apart from the Fields, among many others – he could play his music anytime, anywhere, and no one would make him give it up. Sometimes he’d even bring it into the kitchen, strumming a few tunes when the others begged him enough. A lot of the time, though, it was just him, sitting out in the grass and relishing the warmth of the summer while it lasted, or alone in the common room.

Sometimes, it was him and Pedro.

One particular morning, Balthazar sat on a tree stump near the house, open book on one knee, his eyes gently sliding over the words as he tried out a new song on his ukulele. He wasn’t particularly focused on any one task, but that was fine. The day felt beautiful, one of those late summer affairs that gently reminded you autumn was coming soon, and for once the sun was alone in the sky, and it was fine.

Somewhere in the middle of it, he glanced up and saw that he had company.

Pedro sat a few feet away from him, cross-legged in the grass, his chin resting on his hand. It was almost unsurprising to see him there and to not have noticed him before. Balthazar had this habit of forgetting he existed in a world with other people.

“Pretty day,” Balthazar said breezily, fingers dancing over the ukulele strings.

“Mm,” Pedro answered with a short nod. He didn’t meet Balthazar’s eyes, but it wasn’t in an awkward fashion – more like he was deep in thought. About what, Balthazar could only guess at. It was somewhat rare for this kind of thoughtfulness to fall over Pedro, but he supposed it was a welcome change, and he was content not to push the conversation any further than that. At some point over the last few weeks, they’d come to a sort of understanding, that this quiet company they both shared in, the knowledge that someone else was there and listening, was enough.

After a while, Pedro cleared his throat lightly.

“Can we talk?”

Balthazar looked up. “Yeah, of course.”

“I meant…” Pedro’s face scrunched up. “In private?”

Balthazar shrugged. “I’m not sure how much more private than this it gets.”

“Balthazar, I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Balthazar replied calmly. It was easy to sound that way, to feel that way, even, when the wind outside was so forgiving. “There’s nobody out here. The only ones who could possibly listen in are the birds.”

Pedro frowned, even as he shot a wary glance around them, as if he didn’t believe Balthazar. “What’s wrong with going inside?”

Balthazar shrugged, looking down at his hands.

“The summer is about to end.”

Pedro exhaled through his nose. “Okay, fine. We can talk out here, I guess.”

Balthazar picked absently at chords, waiting.

“What song are you playing?”

“An original.” Balthazar laughed a little. “Figured I’ve tried for enough of them on the piano, might as well branch out. Feel like I could do so much more with the music if I had a guitar, though. Greater range and all, right?”

Pedro smiled. “Any words?”

Balthazar nodded. “Some. Like, uh, here. _Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever._ ” He did not miss the wince on Pedro’s face.

“You’re a true poet,” Pedro said, looking down at the grass his hands were intertwined in.

“It’s not finished. Probably never will be.” Balthazar flicked his hand down, then, letting loose one last chord. He choked the strings with his palm and kept it there. After all, if Pedro was stalling this long, the topic he wanted to broach probably required his full attention.

“That’s a shame.”

Balthazar waited some more. He did not bother reading his book or pretending he wasn’t listening; he only stared at Pedro until the other boy looked away.

“I like girls.”

Balthazar suppressed the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement. Pedro’s voice was serious, so he figured he should take it seriously too. “Yeah, I know.”

“I also like boys.”

This statement came out surprisingly bluntly. Even Pedro looked surprised.

And nothing changed. The air outside smelled and felt exactly the same, and the birds kept on singing their songs, and everything inside Balthazar was as still as a lake on a quiet day.

“That’s fine,” he said.

“I – I know.”

“How long have you – ”

“A while.”

Balthazar couldn’t tell, honestly, what that meant. He didn’t press it.

“Have you – “

“No.”

“So, why me?”

Pedro looked at him, finally. There was something that looked scarily like helplessness in that look.

“Because you – you know.”

“Right.”

Balthazar didn’t miss it when Pedro winced this time, either.

“Yeah.”

“It’s fine, you know,” Balthazar said, echoing words he’d said a minute before. “If you told other people, it would be fine.”

“But…”

“We’re not at the Fields.” He smiled, despite himself. “It’s not like how it was there.”

Pedro pressed his lips together.

“Are you sure about that?”

Balthazar paused. Could he be sure of anything?

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“Hm.” Pedro didn’t look convinced.

“But,” Balthazar said, “it’s worth a try, anyway.”

Pedro swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Because?”

“Because at least then you’ll know who’s worth knowing.”

Pedro looked at Balthazar then, and when their eyes met it felt like something clicked into place. Balthazar would never be able to say what that something was. But he knew, meeting Pedro’s gaze in that very moment, that this was the closest he’d ever come to seeing gratitude in his eyes.

“Okay,” Pedro said finally.

“Okay,” Balthazar said back, and let his fingers play at the strings once more.

There was silence, for a bit. Pedro seemed content to listen to the music and pick at the grass around him. There were questions turning around in Balthazar’s head, but it felt unfair to push at something that felt so new.

“It’s so strange, you know,” Pedro said, eyes on the blades of grass between his fingers.

“What?”

“I think I must have known for years now.” With a loud sigh, Pedro let himself fall back on his hands, and his face turned toward the cloudless sky. “But it’s easy to ignore when you feel so much for a single person for so long.”

“It’s fine not to know until recently,” Balthazar pointed out. “That’s okay, too.”

“I know. But I don’t think…” He sighed again. “I don’t think, back then, I wanted to.”

Balthazar thought about that for a short while.

“So what changed your mind?” he said.

“Just tired of lying, I guess. To other people.” Pedro snorted self-deprecatingly. “To myself.”

“Ah.”

They were quiet, then. Pedro was still, save for an occasional flicker of his eyelashes and the rise and fall of his chest.

“Can I be honest with you?” Balthazar said tentatively into the silence.

Pedro tilted his head.

“I’m glad for you.”

A heartbeat passed by. “Yeah?”

“But there’s still one thing left.”

“And what’s that?”

“John.”

Nothing, for a long half-minute. Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang its song.

“You know,” Pedro said, slowly, “it’s been long enough, hasn’t it?”

Despite himself, relief washed over Balthazar’s heart.

“Are you ever going to talk to him?” he pushed, as gently as he could. “He deserves it, you know.”

“I…” Pedro sighed. “It’s hard.”

“I know,” Balthazar said. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Pedro looked at him, then, long and hard. It would have been easy for Balthazar to look away, to be chased away by the force of Pedro’s gaze like he’d allowed himself to be so many times before. And that’s why he didn’t.

“You don’t mean that,” Pedro said, whispered, really, and it honestly hurt, a little, to know that in this moment, Pedro genuinely didn’t believe him, or couldn’t.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said, because sometimes the truth was easy to admit, and sometimes admitting the truth was just something that needed to be done, and sometimes it was both. “I do, actually.”

Something changed, then, shifted, perhaps. Pedro’s mouth parted, as if in mild surprise, and Balthazar watched, fingers still against the strings, as understanding washed into his eyes.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

After a while, Pedro turned his head forward again, and if Balthazar hadn’t been paying attention he might have missed the serene half-smile that touched the corner of his mouth in that moment. But he had been. He was always paying attention to Pedro, it seemed.

“It really is a beautiful day,” Pedro said to the sky.

His profile was sharp from this angle, the sunlight setting the outline of his face ablaze, and yet the expression on his face was almost unbearably soft. Balthazar might have carried on for the rest of time without seeing a sight like that, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Pedro didn’t think anyone was looking.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said. “It really is.”

All beautiful days have ends. He should have known. But maybe knowing wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe it just didn’t matter.


	5. Part III part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balthazar felt a hand slip into his at this, a hand that squeezed at his palm tightly, desperately. It was the hand of someone who didn’t want to let go, who never wanted to let go, even though he knew he had to, if not now then sometime in a not so distant future.
> 
> It was not so distant at all.

_ii._

“ – Were complications…”

“ – be all right, though – “

“ – careful, now – “

“ – a longer recovery time.”

There were a lot of doctors this time around, and a lot of words that were said. Balthazar had spent an inordinately long time in the waiting room, and he was tired, so tired. It almost didn’t matter what they said.

Almost.

When they brought Ursula back into her room, she was unconscious, and there were needles and tubes and all sorts of scary things in her veins. He had to stand to the side in his rightful place, the place he had inhabited too many times to count, as the nurses fussed over her. The blur of activity, the drone of voices and the flickering of the cruel overhead lights – he’d done this before too many times. In his line of work, you either got used to the monotony or you let yourself be consumed by it, you let it define you, all the way up until the first letter they sent you. This was the first time in a very long time he wasn’t certain what he’d done with it.

At last, he was left alone with Ursula. He let his eyes trace over her closed eyelids, the profile of her nose. He’d done this before. He’d seen this before, sat next to the beds of people he’d cared about just as much as her laying prone, unconscious, just like this. His heart ached, to remember. He’d tried to forget for so long.

It was rather late. The operation had taken longer than expected. He thought about driving home in the dark, leaving Ursula here by herself. He thought about how he didn’t really have a home, and how he’d never really had a home, and how none of them had ever really had homes. Then he drew his jacket over himself and slept, because he was tired of this, tired of thinking, tired of his existence and his reality.

-

Balthazar was thirteen when the handlers announced that, starting for those his age, they would begin holding classes to help them prepare for the future. It was a new thing at the Fields, as far as he could tell. None of the older kids seemed to have any idea what these classes meant.

Pedro, on his part, didn’t bother speculating. “We’re going to find out eventually,” he said with a shrug when Balthazar brought it up one day at dinner. “Why wonder?”

“Pedro, you ought to think about it more,” John said from Balthazar’s other side, almost disapprovingly. “I mean, if anything, I need to be prepared for when I start taking them.”

Pedro snorted on his drink. “John, you have a whole year before you even have to worry about this.”

John shook his head. “It’s never too early to start worrying about the future.”

Balthazar, on his part, didn’t wonder what the classes were about so much as why they were happening in the first place. Why hadn’t they implemented them in the past? Why wait until now?

They weren’t scheduled to start for at least another month, though, so it wasn’t difficult to put it out of his mind for the time-being. Their reading and writing lessons took up a good amount of his time, and the rest of it was spent with Pedro and John.

Though, these days, Balthazar sometimes found himself splitting his time between the two. It was a normal enough occurrence that he resolved not to be too concerned about– it’s not like students of different levels had much opportunity to interact with each other, anyway – but still, the space lingered between them, unspoken and always present.

It was, he supposed, partially because Pedro’s friend group had begun to expand. Balthazar spent some time with them, too, Ben and Beatrice and Meg, but they were more Pedro’s friends than his. Not to say, of course, that he didn’t enjoy their company. He just didn’t really know all that much about them. And Pedro still ate most of his meals with John and Balthazar, but some nights, it was just them.

It was on one such evening that John turned to Balthazar and said, with serious eyes, “Do you ever wonder where we come from, Balthazar?”

The statement was so out of the blue Balthazar didn’t know how to answer for a few moments.

“No, I guess I don’t,” Balthazar said. Did any of them? “Why?”

John shook his head, frowning. “All the stories, Balthazar, all the kids have parents. We were reading one today, and it just made me – I mean, we don’t even have parents, do we? What _are_ parents?”

Balthazar had no idea how to begin conceptualizing the idea of parents, so he didn’t bother trying. “Why are you thinking about this, John?”

“If we have to learn about the future,” John said, pained, “why don’t we know anything about our past?”

 _Why_. It was a question that echoed deep in his core.

Balthazar didn’t want to begin guessing why John didn’t ask that question in Pedro’s presence.

After that, the topic didn’t really come up again. For the most part, Pedro was around, but Balthazar thought he could sense John withdraw a bit about the whole thing when he’d seen that Balthazar couldn’t contribute anything to the topic. The thing was, Balthazar didn’t know what to say about something that was simply impossible to wrap his head around. How did you speak about something you just had no concept of?

The classes started soon enough, but they weren’t very interesting. Mostly they just involved a lot of roleplaying scenarios that were supposed to simulate situations you might encounter in the “outside world”, like shopping or ordering from a menu in a café. They were always provided scripts to read word for word from, though, and no one bothered to read them out with any enthusiasm, so more often than not Balthazar found himself questioning the usefulness of such a class. For all the worth these lessons had to him, he might as well be sitting in the corner of the room staring at the wall for an hour.

Balthazar reported this dutifully to John, of course, who seemed dissatisfied at the information.

“Oh, come on, John, what do you care?” Pedro said, waving his fork about. “You don’t even have to take them for another year.”

“You keep on asking me that,” John said, almost disdainfully, into his bowl of stew. “What does it matter to you if I care?”

“I dunno, it’s just, like, no one else thinks about it as much as you do, you know?” Pedro said.

He wasn’t looking at John’s face. Balthazar was. Balthazar pursed his lips, but he knew it wasn’t his fight.

“Well, classes are definitely still just as boring as ever,” Balthazar said. “Our reading list this month is… something.”

“It’s terrible, is what it is,” Pedro said. “We’re not ten, you know? We’ve been reading the same shit for years now.”

“It’s different books, isn’t it?” John said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, but it’s always about the same thing, and they always end the same way.” Pedro put his fork down with a sigh. “I mean, what’s the point, really?”

It was a joke, of course. John didn’t look like he took it like a joke. Dinner was over shortly after that, though, and they parted ways amiably enough.

That night, before they fell asleep, Pedro looked preoccupied.

“These classes are really quite boring, aren’t they?” Pedro said.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Maybe John’s onto something, here.” Pedro shook his head. “I mean, what’s the _point_ , really? There has to be something else they want from us…”

“This is coming dangerously close to a conspiracy theory,” Balthazar said.

“Well, no, but – I dunno.” Balthazar glanced over just in time to see Pedro frown.

“Hey, Pedro?” Balthazar said quietly.

“Yeah, Balth?”

“We’re going to go to the ocean one day.”

Somewhat to his relief, Pedro’s frown melted into a grin. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

For the next few weeks – or months, Balthazar at some point lost track – they roleplayed using wooden-sounding scripts, or wrote essays about things like “personal morals” and “values”. On one particularly awkward day, the handler read out of a plain-looking book about the precautions they should take when engaging in sexual relations – not that the risk of inopportune pregnancy mattered for them, she said in a monotonous voice, but disease was still very much a concern – but despite the fact that the class was on material that should have by all means been of great interest to many of them, it still managed to be almost clinically dull. Balthazar and Peter began to speculate about ways to skip class without them noticing, whispering about it before they went to bed or the few times their chore rotations lined up and they could do them together.

Then, one rainy afternoon, they walked in to words on the chalkboard –

_Caring - > donation -> completion_

And Balthazar knew, in an instant, that things were about to change.

The courses of their lives had already been set for them, they said. It was the same pathway everyone else in the room was going to go down, they said. There was no room for careers, no room even for hobbies, they said. There was only room for donating – if not now then certainly soon enough, they said.

 _Clones_ , they said. It was a word that meant little to Balthazar, and yet – and yet it meant everything.

In some ways, Balthazar supposed, the information was supposed to be shocking. In others, though, some of the things he heard in that musty room were things he had heard his whole existence, perhaps not in those terms, but in whispers, in the demeanor of the handlers. Perhaps, really, they had known all of their lives.

Or perhaps he simply had no real way to wrap his head around it. That word was what they all were, the handlers said, but Balthazar didn’t know how he could possibly be anything but himself. How could he know how to feel about being called that, really, if he couldn’t fully grasp what it was?

He knew, of course, the basic principles. But that’s all the handlers had ever told them – principles.

John, unsurprisingly, was not satisfied with this explanation. “What does that even mean?” he said, pacing around in one of their usual haunts, outside near the dorm rooms and away from the administration office. “Why would they say something like that?”

Always, why. Balthazar didn’t know why John bothered asking the question to someone like him.

Pedro, of course, wasn’t present.

“Is it really all that surprising?” Balthazar said.

John turned his gaze on him suddenly, blazing.

“Shouldn’t it be?” he said, his voice steady.

“I dunno.” Balthazar shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t.”

John sat next to him with a heavy sigh. “Maybe Pedro’s right. Maybe it’s stupid that I care so much.”

“I don’t think he thinks you’re stupid.”

“Well, no, he didn’t _say_ , but I could tell that’s what he meant,” John said bitterly.

Balthazar chewed at his lip, searching for the right thing to ask, or to say.

“Are things all right between you and him?” he said finally.

“I… I dunno. I guess? I guess maybe they should be.”

John exhaled sharply, then, and when Balthazar looked over, he was startled to find that there were tears brimming in John’s eyes. He reached out and took hold of one of John’s hands, and though John moved as if he might pull away he didn’t.

“We’re going to go to the ocean, one day,” Balthazar whispered. John didn’t answer.

It was at that moment, of course, that Pedro decided to turn up.

“Hey guys, sorry I’m late…” His words died away as he took in the scene. Before Balthazar could say anything to him, though, he strided over, sat down next to John, and took hold of his other hand.

They didn’t speak much, after that. Balthazar just didn’t know what to say.

-

When Balthazar woke up, Ursula was looking at him through half-lidded eyes.

“You didn’t have to stay.” Her voice was a croak. “You have other patients, you know. You have a home.”

He uncurled from his chair, wincing at the dull ache in his limbs. His eyelids felt heavy and crusted over, and there was an insistent pounding in his head that stabbed at his thoughts every time he moved his head. He had not slept well. He usually didn’t, not in hospitals; he had more experience with that than he ought to. Briefly, he considered answering flippantly. He’d spent enough time of his existence deflecting conversations from himself, though. It was about time he was fair.

“It doesn’t feel worth it, anymore, to sleep in a bed that doesn’t feel like mine,” he murmured, half-hoping she wouldn’t hear.

“Oh, Balthazar,” Ursula whispered.

They were quiet for a bit, Balthazar because he couldn’t think of anything to say, Ursula probably because of the pain.

“You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?” Ursula said.

Balthazar stiffened. He should have expected it, honestly. He shouldn’t be surprised. Ursula had always seen through him.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “They were a long time ago.”

Ursula nodded, and didn’t answer.

“You cared for Meg, didn’t you?” Balthazar said carefully. “And you cared for Hero.”

Ursula closed her eyes.

“What was that like?”

They’d talked about this before; they’d told their stories many times. But Balthazar didn’t want Ursula to slip away, not now, when there was still so much time until her inevitable completion. Telling stories kept her alive in a way the tubes and the medicines never could, and this was a story that was probably more important to her than most.

“I hadn’t seen or talked to either of them in years, since we left the Cottages,” she said, the rhythm of her speech starting out slowly. He knew it would pick up speed the more she got into the story. “We’d promised to send each other letters, to learn where our caring took us, to keep up with each other. We made those promises many times. I don’t think any of us really expected them to be kept, though. And maybe that’s why they weren’t.” She turned her head to the window, her eyes faraway. “My assignment to Hero was a total coincidence. I know the only way you got to be with Fields kids was when you chose them, Balthazar, but it wasn’t like that for me and Hero. I remember looking down at the paper in my hands, with her name in black ink, and thinking, _so this is what fate feels like_.”

There was the softest of smiles on her mouth.

“The first time we saw each other, she’d had her first operation a month or so prior. She was strong, stronger than I expected. She embraced me and talked to me like no time had passed at all, and I felt ashamed. I remember thinking about all the promises I broke, and the guilt filled up in me until finally I told her that maybe I shouldn’t be her carer. And she looked at me with confusion and shock in her eyes, and she asked me why in this really quiet voice, and I said I’d been a terrible friend to her. And she threw her head back and she laughed and laughed…”

Ursula’s voice trailed off. Balthazar reached out and rubbed her shoulder. She cleared her throat.

“She was strong. One of the strongest patients I’ve ever had.” Ursula breathed a laugh, here. “She made it all the way to her fourth. She was a legend at our hospital. A lot of the other donors couldn’t believe someone so – so small, so pale, could have made it that far.”

“But you weren’t there for her last,” Balthazar said.

She looked down. “No. It was a month, maybe two, before her last. She walked with me around the yard and asked me to transfer. I asked her why. I was hurt, you know, I’d been by her side for that long after not being by her side for _that long_. It hurt for her to ask me to leave when she needed me the most. And she just looked at me, straight in the eyes, and said, _I don’t think you should see me like that_. I didn’t – understand, at the time. We fought about it for a bit. She said I’d understand when I was a donor, and it hurt for her to alienate me like that.”

Ursula took a deep breath.

“But I understand now. I understand why she wouldn’t ask someone she loved to see her… like that.” She glanced at Balthazar. “Still, I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

His throat was dry. “Why?”

“Because you’ve done this before,” Ursula said simply. “And you can do it again. She wanted to protect me. I understand that. But I think not knowing is worse. Especially when you have known.”

It was silent in the room for a few moments, a silence that ached with memories of the past he’d tried and failed to forget for so long.

“So you love me, then.” Balthazar tried to crack a grin. It didn’t quite work.

“Yeah,” Ursula said. “Yeah.”

“Not like how you loved each other.”

Ursula was quiet for a bit, at that.

“No,” she said finally. “I suppose not.”

Balthazar figured he understood, more than he should.

“And Meg?”

“Ah. Meg.” Ursula smiled. “I remember the last words she said to me. _No worries, babe_. She used to say that a lot to me at the Cottages. She made it to her third. But she was a fighter. I think you’re right, Balthazar. We’re all fighters.”

The words did not comfort him, but they didn’t make him sad, either, and that was important too.

-

The next time Balthazar had tea with John, he felt considerably less tense around the other boy.

Not that all that much had changed between them, but he hadn’t realized how much he’d actually been holding inside his veins thanks to his fallout with Pedro. He hadn’t realized how much that day had impacted his feelings, and his interactions with other people, until he didn’t have to deal with it anymore. It was no longer the only thing that was occupying his thoughts, and he felt safe to think and talk about other things that were probably more important.

“We should move to someplace more comfortable,” Balthazar said.

John snorted. “And where, pray tell, would that be?”

“You haven’t lived until you’ve had a good cup of tea outside,” Balthazar said seriously.

John rolled his eyes, but he picked up his cup and followed Balthazar out anyway.

It wasn’t sunny out, but the sky was pale enough that if you closed your eyes, you could pretend. There were a few rocking chairs on the farmhouse’s porch that they took up. When Balthazar had arrived at the Cottages, the porch had been bare, but these chairs had been part of a rainy day project the other boys in his house had undertaken. Keffers had shaken his head when he’d seen them. “Don’t ever get up to anything useful around here,” people had heard him muttering for days. But the chairs stayed, so it was suspected that Keffers didn’t mind as much as he said he did.

The tea was warm in his hands, and against his lips. He rocked back and forth gently. It was a good day.

“So, uh, what have you been up to?” Balthazar said.

John’s gaze flickered toward him before turning back to the slanted hills. “I’ve been… doing a lot of reading.”

“You really ought to get yourself some friends,” Balthazar said half-jokingly, knowing he was probably the last one who should be saying that to John.

They were at a place in their relationship where they could make jokes like that, though, and John smiled faintly. “I don’t need friends,” he said. “If I need someone to talk to, I’ve got you, don’t I?”

Balthazar tried not to let that statement bother him. It shouldn’t bother him. John’s choices weren’t Balthazar’s to make, after all. If it were him, he wouldn’t want people insisting he needed to make more friends.

“What do you think of the Cottages?” Balthazar said. “You’ve been here a good while now, yeah?”

John shrugged. “It’s okay. Amazingly enough, it’s less well kept than the Fields. Who knew that was possible?” His nose scrunched up. “And there’s too many spiders.”

Balthazar laughed. “Well, we are the ones doing the keeping, so…”

“Yeah, that’s true, isn’t it,” John said. “When we’ve got people like Pedro around…”

The conversation fell flat, as it usually did when it turned toward Pedro. Balthazar supposed that made sense. They both had very complicated relationships with Pedro D.

“How are you and him, anyway?” John said hesitantly.

That was a surprise. Balthazar wouldn’t have expected John to ask him something like that, not in a hundred years – in a universe where they had that long, anyway. Then again, he hadn’t expected himself and Pedro to come back from their fallout the way they had.

“We’ve made up,” Balthazar said. “Or something like that, anyway. He won’t leave me alone when I play my music now.”

John smirked. “I mean, can you blame him?”

Balthazar shook his head. “It’s his way of making up for it, I think,” he said. “All the time we haven’t spent together.”

That was probably it, come to think of it, why they’d made up in the first place. That was a very good reason to want to make up, all the time they’d lost versus all the time they still had left, the balance of the two slowly shifting with each day. Then again, it was impossible to guess at Pedro’s reasons. Balthazar had tried for years, over a decade, even, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly succeeded.

“Still,” Balthazar continued, “it puts more pressure on you than you’d think, to have an audience when you’re trying to get better at something. You don’t want to make mistakes, even though you basically have to.”

“Tell that to Pedro, see what happens,” John said.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said with a nod. “Once he’s got an idea in his head, there’s no real stopping him, is there?”

They were silent for a moment, and it was a content sort of silence. Balthazar finished his tea, and stared at the dregs of it as they swirled around slowly in the bottom of the cup.

“He wants to make things right with you again, you know,” Balthazar said.

John carefully set his cup next to his chair. “Forgive me, Balthazar, if I don’t believe you.”

“What’d I say? Once he’s got an idea…”

“No, I can believe _that_ part. I just don’t think he ever will.”

There was a bitter distance to John’s voice, the kind of tone that Balthazar should have been surprised to find in John’s words. He wasn’t, though, and that in itself was disconcerting.

“He’s trying to be a better person, I think,” Balthazar said. “But you know that’s hard, for people like us. I don’t know if he thinks better can exist in people like us.”

“I don’t,” John said darkly.

The words startled him. “Don’t say things like that.”

“We’re not people, are we?” John said, his eyes flashing with – not anger, not shame – Balthazar didn’t know what it was. But it was the first time Balthazar had heard someone at the Cottages say something that blatant about the truth of their existences in such an open space. Despite himself, he felt a chill crawl slowly down his spine.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Well,” John said, settling back into his chair, grimly satisfied. “There we go.”

“It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it?” Balthazar said.

John looked at him, then, the expression on his face inscrutable. They didn’t say anything after that.

But aside from brief moments of tension like that, for the first time in a long time, he felt truly content with how things were. He felt like maybe this wasn’t where he was meant to be, but it was a good place to be anyway. He had his music, and he had his friends, and he had John, in a sense, and he had Pedro. And that was enough, wasn’t it? These were all things he’d had at one point or another, but now he had them all together, and knowing what it was like not to have some of those things made having them all the more significant.

Sometimes, he had almost all of them at the same time. Pedro started organizing weekly movie nights, all of them huddled around the television and straining to pick up the spotty audio. A lot of the time they’d just give up and make up their own dialogues to the movies, occasionally having to pause because no one could come up with the next line, they were laughing too hard. They traded off snack duties, between Ursula’s chocolate bars and Beatrice and Hero’s cookies and Ben’s popcorn. Balthazar sat in the chair and Pedro sat on the floor and leaned against his legs, and he figured he was about as comfortable as he was ever going to be.

After the movie was over, more often than not there’d be raucous cries all around for him to pull out his ukulele. It didn’t take much convincing, and even though he made plenty of mistakes, it didn’t seem to matter. They smiled all the same, and Balthazar smiled the hardest at all, so hard sometimes it hurt.

It wasn’t even that bad with John, at least a few of the times they had tea together. He started bringing a book to their occasional meetings and leading John outside, and just enjoying the silence of the day in the company of someone else. John didn’t say anything about it, but that also meant he didn’t complain, which was victory in itself.

And, very occasionally, he would turn around in the piano room and find John sitting behind him wordlessly, not complimenting it or criticizing his music, just listening.

He supposed that period of time was, hazy as his recollection of it was, when he felt the happiest at the Cottages. It was difficult to pinpoint, of course, because as many sad times he’d had at the Cottages he had at least twice as many happy times, and half the time he didn’t know where to begin with quantifying feelings like happiness. Maybe this wasn’t even the happiest he’d ever felt there. Maybe there had been better times. But it was the most stable he ever felt, that was certain. He felt suspended in time, thinking of the past and thinking of the future unnecessary. The happiness in his heart was steady, and it didn’t need much to keep it going.

One morning, his door crashed open while he was asleep, and Pedro ran up to his bed and yelled, “Happy birthday, Balthazar!”

“What the hell,” Balthazar mumbled into his pillow.

Pedro ran out of the room laughing as Balthazar half-heartedly threw pillows after him, and when Balthazar was slightly more conscious he noticed a box tied around with string at the foot of his bed. He unraveled the string and opened the box. Inside was an assortment of cassette tapes, most of them from bands he’d never heard of before. A short note rested on top of the stack.

_Got the whole house to chip in. Made extra sure this is all good to listen to. Don’t ask me how. Happy 18 th, mate._

Balthazar ran his fingers over the messy scrawl and felt his heart swell up in his chest. He looked out the window at the rising sun. They’d been at the Cottages for almost two years, but to him it felt more like a handful of weeks or days. The memory of their very first day there came to the front of his mind almost too easily, the rain light on his skin, all the rickety buildings and empty fields around them cast in an uncertainty that had seemed almost inescapable. He didn’t know how much time they had left there. He didn’t really want to know. He just knew the more days that passed, the more each sunrise counted.

When he made his way downstairs, his housemates were all sitting around the television, grinning widely as he came down. While he was on the stairs, they broke into a badly out of tune version of “Happy Birthday”, still singing by the time he reached them. Balthazar rubbed at his eyes. He was still a bit sleepy from the abrupt awakening Pedro had given him. There was a crudely painted banner hanging on the wall with the words “Happy 18th”, and everyone was smiling, and it looked suspiciously like there were balloons up at the ceiling.

“What’s going on?” he said, confused.

“Your surprise party, mate,” Ben said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Not every day you turn eighteen, you know?”

“How did you guys even – remember – “

“Are you implying that we don’t care about you, Balthy?” Ben said, clutching at his chest dramatically. “I am shocked and hurt and _insulted_.”

“We don’t… usually do parties…” Balthazar said faintly.

“Well,” Beatrice said, sharp grin on her face, “we figured you’re the last of us to turn eighteen, might as well make it something special, right?”

“And it’s a good excuse to eat cake,” Ben added.

“Not like you helped make it in the slightest,” Beatrice said with a roll of her eyes. “It was all me and Hero.”

“Beatrice D, I will have you know that when it comes to healthy encouragement I am simply the _best there is_.”

In the midst of the squabbling, Ursula quietly slipped him a small stack of photographs with a small smile. “It’s about time you had something on those walls of yours,” Ursula said.

His friends. There were portraits of all of his friends, some of them candid, all of them smiling brightly. Pedro was one of the ones who actually looked at the camera. It was like someone had tapped him on the shoulder, and he’d turned his head around just in time to smile. John was there in some of them stoo, a hesitant smile tugging at his lips. Beatrice and Ben standing with their arms around each other, grinning like they hadn’t been arguing literally the second before the camera went off. There were some of Meg and Hero, reading books or walking down dirt paths, frozen laughter tossed over their shoulders. Even Ursula, who had an almost chronic shyness of the lens, made an occasional appearance, an uncertain smile on her face, the angle of the shot as if she’d been holding the camera herself. There was a picture of a mug – his mug. There were some of him, the back of him as he sat at the piano, a faraway shot of him playing the ukulele and sitting in the grass.

“Thank you,” Balthazar said, overwhelmed. At the Fields, there’d been too many children to celebrate birthdays. Usually, during the morning announcements that echoed throughout the building over tinny speakers, there was a list of names spoken in a drone, and that was it. That was how you knew you were a year older. There had been small gifts here and there, a yoyo with a broken string or a jar of pennies, but only for the people you really cared about, because there was no way or resources to get something for everyone that you knew, let alone something that actually counted as a decent present. They’d learned about birthday parties from books. Balthazar never thought he could have one of his own. He felt overwhelmed, overwhelmed with gratitude to his friends that they could be so kind to him, more gratitude than he could ever say.

They all walked to the kitchen and took the cake from the refrigerator and gave pieces to everyone who stopped by. Balthazar tried to help them clean everything up, but they all insisted he not do any work. He didn’t even have to make his own tea.

John came in, at some point. “I don’t have any presents,” he said quietly to Balthazar. “But happy birthday. You know I don’t say this to just anyone, but you deserve it.”

Sometime after that, amidst the mayhem – and, in Balthazar’s case, quiet conversation with Ursula – he noticed John and Pedro whispering to each other next to the oven. Pedro reached out and squeezed John’s shoulder. After a brief moment of hesitation, John brought his hand up to cover Pedro’s. He left after that.

That evening, his house decided to throw a party for everyone to come to. They brought down Balthazar’s cassette player and turned up the volume as high as it could go, and they turned off all the lights except for one, and people from all over the Cottages came to dance.

It was fun to take in for the first bit, but Balthazar had never been one for crowds, and eventually he made his way outside. He sat on the hard ground with his back against the wall and looked up at the moon. It was full, tonight. He wondered if that meant anything.

The door opened and closed, and someone sat next to him.

“We throw a party in your honor,” Pedro said, “and you scorn all our hardest efforts.”

Balthazar smiled. “I appreciate it,” he said. “I really do. Time to myself is nice too, though.”

“I see.” Pedro paused. “So what are you doing out here by yourself? Thinking? You seem pretty deep in thought.”

“I’m thinking about how much of a dork you are, for organizing all this,” Balthazar said.

“What? I definitely did not do this all on my own!” Pedro sounded almost indignant.

Balthazar smiled. “Of course not.”

Pedro looked at him briefly, the corner of his mouth upturned, and didn’t answer.

“Oh, thanks for the tapes, by the way,” Balthazar said, remembering. “I haven’t listened to all of them yet, but they’re really good so far.”

Pedro didn’t say anything to that either. Balthazar was content not to speak. The light of the moon naturally drew his eye, and he couldn’t help but wonder if, when Pedro looked at it, he saw the same thing Balthazar did.

“I talked to John earlier today,” Pedro said.

“I saw,” Balthazar replied carefully.

“It was…” He let his breath out in a sharp exhale. “It was something I needed to do. I’m glad I did it.”

Balthazar didn’t ask about what they said. Whatever was said between them should stay that way. It was a secret he was content with never knowing.

“Hey,” Pedro said. “Fancy one last birthday present?”

Balthazar’s heart knocked against his ribs. “What?”

“I want to go on a trip with you and John,” Pedro said. “I’ve been learning to drive with Keffers. It’ll be good. We’ll be together like the old days, you know? And… we’re both eighteen now. Who knows – who knows how much longer we’re going to be around.”

Balthazar looked away from the moon and at Pedro, who looked back with wide, genuine eyes. He’d missed that look. He’d missed it quite a lot, more than he could have known before then, and more than he could ever say.

He reached out and took Pedro’s hand, and said, “Let’s do it,” as sincerely as he could.

They looked back at the moon, still holding hands, and sat there for a long while. Then they went back inside to face whatever was waiting for them, in the future, together.

In preparation for the trip, they spent weeks poring over a map and figuring out where to go and how much money to spend. Pedro was enthusiastic about the prospect, so enthusiastic. Balthazar was just content to come along for the ride. They planned meticulously, and it seemed for a short while like the most excellent of ideas.

The night before the trip, though, Balthazar lay on his bed in the dark and thought about all the ways things could go right, and all the ways they could go wrong. He’d sort of stopped going to Ursula’s room at nights, now. He figured she would appreciate all the time she could get alone with her friends, with Hero. None of them really knew when they would leave the Cottages – sign-ups for carer training were, technically, on a voluntary basis – just that it was a deadline to always be remembered.

Being alone in a car with Pedro and John, traipsing across the countryside for a whole week. They had never been alone with each other, not even at the Fields, not like this, anyway. As with any new experience, Balthazar felt the minutes and hours leading up to it keenly, and his heart beat faster at the mystery of it, the uncertainty. He couldn’t know what would happen. None of them could. He couldn’t know if what happened would be good, or bad, or something else entirely.

There was a quiet knock on his door.

“Who is it?” Balthazar said, hesitantly.

“Can I come in?” It was the muffled sound of Pedro’s voice.

 _What for_ , was a question Balthazar should ask. _Why?_ Always, why?

“Yeah,” he said, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Pedro opened the door gently and left it swinging on his hinges. He came over and sat down next to Balthazar on the bed, hips brushing. Balthazar tried looking over at him, and couldn’t. The only thing he could see in the darkness was the shadowy outline of his nose, a bit of his chin.

“What’s up?” Balthazar said, as casually as he could.

“I…” A pause. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

 _Me neither_ , Balthazar should say. Not for the same reasons, he’d bet.

“It’s worth a try,” Balthazar said, a repeated mantra he’d uttered for weeks now, months, really.

“No, but – it feels so _stupid_ , sometimes.” Pedro laughed, short and without humor. “Like a stupid trip can fix all my problems. I’m just… running away, aren’t I?”

“You’ve done that a lot, in your time,” Balthazar agreed.

Pedro knocked their shoulders together. “Hey, watch it.”

“But,” Balthazar said, more quietly, “we all have.”

“Even you?”

Balthazar almost wanted to laugh.

“I’m really proud of you, Pedro,” he said, his throat tightening, because he’d never dared to say something like this before out loud. He’d never dared to tell Pedro a single word of what he truly felt about him, or for him. It was something about the darkness, probably, that somehow made this conversation easier. Something about the unspoken promise that his words belonged to the shadows and not to the light of day, where they could be seen for the rest of forever.

“What for?” Pedro sounded legitimately confused. Like he didn’t deserve it.

Balthazar swallowed. “I think you’re doing the right thing. John needs you, you know.”

Pedro shook his head. “Balthazar, John has never needed anyone.”

He thought about all the afternoons he’d spent drinking tea with John, the long and aching silences over something – someone they both knew was on each other’s minds. All the years at the Fields of John looking up to Pedro, thinking the world of him, idolizing him. All the years Pedro grew distant, and how the look in John’s eyes became distant too.

“I think you’d be surprised,” Balthazar said simply.

Pedro sighed. Balthazar could feel him shifting against him.

“You should bring your ukulele onto the trip,” Pedro said.

Despite the fact that he knew Pedro couldn’t see, Balthazar quirked an eyebrow.

“I’d just annoy the hell out of you guys. Imagine hours and hours of me practicing the same chords and songs, over and over again.”

Another shift, like Pedro was shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t think either of us would mind.”

Balthazar hummed tunelessly. “Good to know.”

They were silent for a while. Balthazar could feel the slow rhythm of Pedro’s breathing, a steady touch and retreat between their shoulders. How different would their lives be, if they were as steady together as the cadence of Pedro’s breaths? He couldn’t even imagine it.

“Say, Balthazar?”

“Hm?”

“Would you ever write a song for me?”

It was an unfair question, perhaps the most unfair Pedro could have asked. But how could he know? He never did.

And what could Balthazar say to that? That he already had? That he spent the minutes and hours before he fell asleep writing songs in his head for a boy who would never hear them, that the music he’d never play in waking spun so effortlessly through his dreams he couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to? That he would probably spend the rest of his short existence writing songs not because he wanted to, but because he had to?

Such confessions were unthinkable.

“Maybe,” Balthazar said instead.

Pedro sighed again, softer, longer. A few seconds later, a weight settled onto Balthazar’s shoulder. Pedro had rested his head there.

“You should go to bed,” Balthazar whispered.

Something nudged against his palm. Sweaty fingers slid into the spaces between his; his breath hitched at the touch. But he knew that was his cue not to say anything more, and so he didn’t, not when Pedro fell asleep on his shoulder, and not when he fell asleep too.

Balthazar woke up in the morning alone in his bed, and aching from falling asleep in such an uncomfortable position. He stretched out his stiffened joints with a tiny groan. Then, remembering flooded back, the conversation last night, what was ahead that day. He swallowed down the sudden dread that swelled up in his throat and, upon getting out of bed, methodically put on the clothes he’d laid out the night before. He put his ukulele in its case, picked it up along with his already-packed bag, and headed downstairs.

The common room was empty. He looked out the window. A small, dusty sedan was parked in front of the farmhouse. Its trunk was open, and Balthazar could see Pedro putting bags in. John stood some distance apart, his hands in his pockets. It occurred to Balthazar, suddenly, that this was the first time he’d seen the brothers – though did they even think of each other as brothers anymore? – genuinely alone together in a long time. He felt, suddenly and profoundly, that he had no place on this trip, that he would be a third party, that he would be unwelcome. He felt he should have said no when Pedro asked him to come.

But he’d told Pedro that he didn’t have to do this alone, and Balthazar didn’t want to be the one who broke promises. He left the house and made his way across the yard to the pair of them.

“Balthazar!” Pedro called out as he approached. “You ready for this, mate?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Balthazar called back. He tossed his bag into the trunk, and kept the ukulele protectively close to his chest when Pedro reached out for it. “I think I’ll feel better about keeping it in the car with us.”

“Yeah, all right.” Pedro ran a hand through his hair. “So. We’re going now.”

Wordlessly, John opened the door to the passenger seat. Pedro looked at him for a while, then shrugged his shoulders and got into the driver’s seat, leaving Balthazar for the back. That was fine by him. It was his initial desire, actually, both for the room for his ukulele and the opportunity for the brothers to talk.

Pedro backed out from in front of the house and turned onto the winding road that led away from the Cottages, the same road that brought a bus once a year, the same road the older kids took to disappear on the days-long trips Balthazar and everyone else used to wonder about when they’d first gotten to the Cottages, where they were going and when they’d be coming back. Balthazar realized, with a start, that they were the older kids now, going on their own days-long trip. He didn’t feel like an older kid. He didn’t feel like he wanted to be one, either.

“Ah, shit,” Pedro said.

“What?” John and Balthazar said simultaneously, with varying levels of concern.

“You know what I should have gotten you to do, Balthazar? Should have asked you to bring your tapes.”

“Wow,” John said flatly.

“It’ll be quiet in here without music!” Pedro complained. “I forgot the car had a cassette player. I think the radio’s broken, though. Balthazar, you could always - ?”

“I’m not going to play my ukulele in the back of a moving vehicle,” Balthazar said firmly.

“Right, right, of course not,” Pedro said, waving his hand, dismissing the idea as quickly as he’d had it.

“Honestly, I’m a bit wounded you’ll think it’ll be too quiet without music,” Balthazar said. “Underestimate our capacities for conversation that much?”

“Well, it’s not like anyone was saying anything just now, is it?” Pedro said, raising his eyebrows at him in the rear view mirror.

“You’ve got to work up to it,” Balthazar said, leaning forward between Pedro and John’s seats. “Good conversation is like – uh – a finely aged wine. Or something.”

“Oh my god.” Pedro was smiling. “Get better metaphors.”

“Similes,” Balthazar corrected.

“Pedantic,” Pedro shot back.

“Oh, you’ve got me there,” Balthazar said, smirking. “Such long, fancy words. You even know what that means?”

“Fuck off, mate,” Pedro said. Balthazar could see, in the rear view mirror, the tiniest hint of a smile on his face.

Balthazar looked over at John – to ask him for back up, or something along those veins – but, at how he’d decidedly turned away from the conversation and was now staring obstinately out the window, whatever words Balthazar had been about to say died in his throat.

Why? It was a word that was always on Balthazar’s mind these days, it seemed, always unanswered. He leaned back in his seat, sufficiently quieted.

Pedro looked at him in the mirror, concern present in his eyes. Balthazar shook his head, as slight a movement as he could make it. Pedro’s hands tightened around the wheel, and that was all.

“So, uh, what do you guys want to do for lunch?” Pedro said.

“Don’t care,” John said to the window.

“Yeah, take us to our destination, O mighty road trip planner,” Balthazar said. “Our lives are in your hands.”

“Such a burden to bear,” Pedro said, slapping a hand over his heart.

“Hey,” Balthazar said sternly. “Two hands on the wheels, now.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Pedro put both of his hands back on the wheel. “Also, I definitely know what pedantic means.”

“And what’s that?” Balthazar raised his eyebrows in question.

“That you’re a prick,” Pedro said, looking into the rearview mirror and sticking his tongue out at Balthazar.

“Whoa, there, eyes on the road,” Balthazar said, holding up his hands.

“Who here knows how to drive? Yeah, that’s right, it’s me. I’m the one who knows how to drive.”

“Please. Have mercy.”

Throughout the exchange, Balthazar couldn’t help but feel John’s silence keenly. To be fair, Balthazar and Pedro weren’t giving him much chance to join in. But, on Balthazar’s part, it wasn’t something he was consciously thinking about. The way he talked to Pedro just felt natural. It was wholly unfair, and he suddenly felt ashamed, that what felt natural seemed like it could only come at the expense of John’s exclusion.

They stopped at a roadside diner for lunch. Balthazar sat down first, and before John could do anything, Pedro slid in next to Balthazar. John took his place across from them silently.

The waitress came by. “To drink?”

“Uh, coffee with cream and sugar, please,” Balthazar said.

“Same,” John said quickly.

Pedro looked at him briefly. “Orange juice,” he said, his eyes flickering back over the menu.

It was John’s first time being in a restaurant. He didn’t say, of course, but Balthazar could tell, from the tightness with which he gripped the menu and how he didn’t flip the plastic pages. When Pedro and Balthazar ordered, John just waved in their direction vaguely and said, “I’ll have what they’re having.”

When the waitress left, Pedro leaned over the table and said, quietly, “John, if you’re not comfortable with this or ready or whatever, there’s still time to turn back home.”

Irritation flared in John’s eyes, long enough for mild alarm to rise up in Balthazar’s lungs. Soon enough, though, it disappeared, his expression smooth as it ever was.

“I’m not a child,” John said, voice blank. “This was your idea, anyway.”

Pedro pursed his lips, but said nothing more on the subject.

They weren’t silent when the food came, but there was a marked sense of tension that Balthazar couldn’t quite shake off. John didn’t laugh at any of their jokes, didn’t offer up any of his own. Even when they left the diner and got back into the car, that sense of – dread? – didn’t quite go away.

That night, when they stopped at the first motel they could find, they were offered two rooms for the three of them. Before any of them could discuss anything, John snatched one of the keys and disappeared up the stairs.

Pedro shot Balthazar a sidelong glance. “You and me, then,” he said, tilting his head. He slung his bag over his shoulder, and Balthazar followed him up the stairs.

Upon opening the door to their room, they discovered that there was only one bed. Pedro simply shrugged his shoulders and promptly took his shirt off. “I drove all day, therefore I get to shower first,” he said. Balthazar sat on the bed and watched Pedro leave the room, eyes on the bare skin of his back, until the bathroom door closed.

When they were both showered and dressed for bed, they climbed under the covers. Balthazar lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. It didn’t seem possible to even close his eyes, at this moment. He could feel the bare skin of Pedro’s arm against his. Pedro hadn’t worn a shirt to bed.

“Balthazar? Can I tell you something?”

He was caught off guard by the words, and by the way Pedro said them. There was – not a weakness to them, but a vulnerability that he wasn’t prepared for, and that he’d never encountered in Pedro’s voice before.

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared.”

Unbidden, Balthazar’s heart started beating harder, faster. “Why?”

“I’m scared I’ll lose him.”

“You won’t.”

“I’m scared I’ll lose you.”

Balthazar’s throat tightened. “You won’t.”

“But I will, won’t I? If not now, then someday.” Pedro’s words, now, were barely louder than a whisper. “We all do. We all have to.”

“Why?”

“That’s just who we are.” A long sigh. “What we are.”

Balthazar didn’t answer.

“We’ve got to leave the Cottages soon, you know,” Pedro said. “There’s no way around it.”

“It’s a choice, really, we don’t _have_ to…”

“That’s bullshit, Balthazar, and you know it.” Agitation seeped into Pedro’s voice. “Of course we have to. We have to because everyone we knew when we first got there is gone now. And they’re gone because everyone they knew when they got to the Cottages is gone too. We leave because everyone else does. Because if we stay, we’ll be the ones left behind, and we’ll be just as alone. That’s why we go.”

Pedro’s words had been getting faster and faster, and now his speech halted entirely. Balthazar’s heartbeat did not slow. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think he ever would.

There was silence, for a long, awful while. And then, in a very quiet, very small voice –

“I don’t want to lose you, Balthazar.”

Balthazar felt a hand slip into his at this, a hand that squeezed at his palm tightly, desperately. It was the hand of someone who didn’t want to let go, who never wanted to let go, even though he knew he had to, if not now then sometime in a not so distant future.

It was not so distant at all.

Balthazar squeezed back. It was all he could do to tell Pedro how he felt in this moment. What could he say, what words existed that could possibly cover the extent and the depth of what he _felt_ right now? He felt so damn much. There was not a single word that could make sense of any of it.

They held hands for a long while, for a short while. They held hands until Balthazar fell asleep. He didn’t know, after that, when they let go, just that sometime in the night, they did.

In his dreams, they did not let go. In his dreams, Pedro wrapped his arms around his chest and stayed there. They didn’t have to worry about leaving the Cottages, in his dreams.

The next morning, Pedro was already out of bed when Balthazar woke up. He hadn’t dressed yet, or caught onto the fact that Balthazar was awake, and Balthazar watched as he moved about the room as quietly as he could. The curtains were drawn, but it was light enough in the room for the paleness of Pedro’s skin to stand out among the shadows.

“Morning,” Balthazar said quietly.

Pedro’s shoulders tensed up, then relaxed. “Good morning,” he said without turning around.

Balthazar rubbed at his eyes tiredly. “Time is it?”

“Bit past seven.”

“Well, _shit_.” Balthazar frowned disapprovingly. “Are we getting an early start or something?”

“No.” A pause. “I just. Needed to get some air. Covers were kind of stifling.”

Balthazar knew, from the awkward set of Pedro’s voice, that he wasn’t telling the truth. Something happened last night. Balthazar just couldn’t fathom what it was.

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

Pedro looked over his shoulder at him. There was a look in his eyes, something conflicted. He turned away again.

“You should get some more sleep,” he said.

Without protest, Balthazar rolled over onto his side and tugged the covers over his head. He could have sworn he felt a ghost of someone’s arms around him before sleep overtook him once more.

When Balthazar awoke again, he was – once more – alone. On the nightstand sat a cup of coffee, still warm to the touch. Balthazar felt something strange twinge in his stomach when he saw it. It wasn’t that good, if he was going to be honest, which was to be expected of motel grade coffee. The quality of the coffee wasn’t what mattered.

He met Pedro in the parking lot. John was already sitting in the car, in the backseat this time. “I guess I’ll go check out, then,” Pedro said with a nod. Balthazar sat on the hood of the car, pulled out his ukulele, and started strumming at it idly.

He could feel John looking at him from inside the car. He rapped on the window with his knuckles and mouthed, “Any requests?” The question was answered with an impassive shrug. He let his fingers settle into John’s song – though was it really his song, anymore?

It had been one of the first songs Balthazar had learned. No matter how long it had been since the last time he’d played it, it still came to him almost effortlessly. He had played it a great many times when they were younger, Pedro and John his permanent audience members. Maybe it was just something about first songs in general, like a first friend or a first love, that just stuck in your mind and never quite left, no matter how hard you tried to make it go.

“Hey, I didn’t know you still knew that song.”

Balthazar looked up at Pedro, just now approaching, and struck a loud chord abruptly. “Lot of things you don’t know about me, I bet,” he said, half-smiling.

He’d meant it to come across as a joke, but Pedro didn’t smile back. There was a small crease between his brows, like he was unsettled by something. “To the next town, shall we?” he said, and a few minutes later they left the parking lot.

Balthazar kept his ukulele between his knees. Pedro kept his eyes on the road, hands tight around the steering wheel.

“Hey, Pedro, are you okay?” Balthazar hazarded.

“Mm,” Pedro grunted.

“Because you seem – rather – high- _strung_.” He tapped his hands against the hard case of the ukulele for effect.

“Oh my _god_.” Just like that, a grin broke out on Pedro’s face, like the sun had broken through from behind the clouds. “That was _obscene_.”

It was impossible not to smile back. Pedro’s emotions had always been infectious. “You definitely could not do better than that, Pedro D.”

“Nor would I want to,” Pedro said.

“You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Try me, mate.”

“Both of you sicken me,” John said from the backseat, sending Pedro and Balthazar into helpless fits of laughter. And just like that, the tension Balthazar felt keenly digging under his skin dissipated.

Halfway through the morning, they stopped at a small town to look at all the stores. None of them had enough money for the expensive items in the windows, but they all agreed that looking at them was enough. Growing up at the Fields, none of them had ever had that much, so none of them really felt like they wanted things like that now. For Balthazar, it was the idea of change that got to him the most. He’d spent years trying to make the best of what he had, whatever little that was. Anything more than that would just throw him off balance.

They passed by a music store, and Pedro pointed at the guitars in the window excitedly. Balthazar smiled, but there was a lump in his throat he couldn’t quite ignore. Playing a guitar was quite different from playing a ukulele, he’d wager. At this point, not having had a single minute of instruction from anyone but himself, he wouldn’t be able to pick up and play a guitar the way he wanted to. He wondered, with a dull aching somewhere inside him, what kind of universe he’d have to live in to play a guitar the way he wanted to. He didn’t know why the thought made him feel the way he did. How could he feel so profoundly the loss of something he’d never had to begin with?

“Are you okay?” Pedro said, eyes softening with concern.

Balthazar looked away from the display. “The price tag is giving me palpitations,” he said.

“You should see the trombones,” John remarked dryly.

“Heaven forbid I ever pick up a trombone,” Balthazar said.

They walked back to the car and set off for the next town. A few hours into the drive, John was asleep in the backseat, his lanky legs curled awkwardly under him.

“He’s going to wake up with some wicked cramps,” Pedro said, glancing at the rear view mirror.

“Should we wake him up now?” Balthazar said. “Spare him the misery?”

“Nah. He looks peaceful,” Pedro said.

Balthazar turned his head to look at John’s sleeping figure. “Do you remember, I mean, back at the Fields, that time John fell asleep during assembly?”

“Shit, yeah,” Pedro said, recollection livening his voice. “Miss Violet called him out in front of the whole crowd. The expression on his face was _priceless_.”

“He actually looked sort of happy for once, when he was asleep,” Balthazar mused. “But then after…”

“All in all, it was pretty funny, though, you’ve got to admit.”

Balthazar shrugged. “Sure.”

“We got in trouble for the most idiotic things, didn’t we?” Pedro settled back into his seat, smiling at the thought. “That time we snuck into the handlers’ common room after hours so we could watch the adult programs on the telly.”

“That time you cut in front of everyone waiting their turn for the radio just so you could listen to your favorite song,” Balthazar added.

“And yours, too, of course.” Pedro scrunched up his face in thought. “Oh, what about that time John and I almost started a food fight over a plastic thing of chocolate pudding?”

“Shit, and _I_ had to lose my dinner along with you guys just because I was there. I was so irritated at the both of you.”

“But you just took it,” Pedro said, almost fondly. “You never complained about the punishments, did you? Never a bad word about them.”

Balthazar turned his face to the window, eyes on the hazy clouds that drifted by. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

Pedro opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. He seemed to recognize, if not as strongly as Balthazar, that they were reaching the territory of things and memories that were probably better left unsaid. It occurred to Balthazar, in that moment, that the longer they knew each other, the larger that territory grew. Some days, it felt passable, like they were able to forge some sort of bridge that let them meet again. Some days it felt like a treacherous ocean.

“I feel like…” Pedro hesitated briefly. “I feel like there’s a lot I haven’t apologized for enough.”

“Pedro…” He meant it to sound like a warning – if they did this now, there was no returning, no coming back from it – but mostly he thought he just sounded tired.

“I was a horrible person,” Pedro said with a self-deprecating laugh. “To you and to John and to everyone. And instead of saying anything about it, I just – I just ran away.”

“Pedro, you don’t have to…”

“No, Balthazar!” His voice was suddenly sharp with desperation. “Just – let me say this, okay?”

“Pedro,” Balthazar said, wearily, “You were just a kid.”

“Why?” Pedro demanded. “Why are you so insistent that we don’t – “

“Because I don’t want to hear your apologies,” Balthazar said. “You don’t need to. You _shouldn’t_ need to. Not to me.”

“Why?” Pedro repeated. His face was turned toward the road and Balthazar didn’t know what it looked like. He could guess.

But it was a question he had never been able to answer, not to anyone else, not to himself. Trying to think of an answer made him go down roads and loops and trains of thoughts that were unpleasant to go down. So he just didn’t.

“I’d forgive you for just about anything,” Balthazar said. “What’s the use of apologizing when you have that?”

Pedro pulled over to the side of the road and slowed to a halt. The road was empty on both sides. He turned in his seat and looked at Balthazar, _really_ looked at him. It was impossible to describe a look like that, the kind of look that paralyzed Balthazar to his very core, that made him feel hot and cold and everything in between all at once. It was the kind of look that could only be accompanied by deafening silence.

“Balthazar,” Pedro said finally.

“Pedro.” His words fought their way out of his throat. “Please, just drive.”

“Balthazar.”

“Please.”

Pedro did, and it was quiet again.

A few minutes had passed before Balthazar decided the conversation couldn’t end like that. So he said, “You know I’ll always be there for you?”

“Not always,” Pedro said. “But – yeah. I know.”

“We’re going to the ocean someday,” Balthazar said, almost surprised he was allowing himself to say something like that. None of them had said anything like that in some time. This seemed like the kind of time and place for words like them, though, and that’s why he said them.

Pedro nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds nice.”

He tilted his head, then, tilted a sidelong glance at Balthazar, and he smiled. It was a good smile. It was the sort of smile that made Balthazar feel like it was going to be okay, and that made him want to feel that way.

When they stopped at the hotel that night, they checked into a room with two beds. Pedro offered to sleep on the floor before anyone else could say anything. That was the way they slept that night.

They decided to stay in town the next day. Pedro, upon talking to the receptionist, had heard of a river within walking distance of their hotel. When he brought up the proposition, John shrugged, calculatedly indifferent. Balthazar could feel Pedro’s excitement flag a bit, so he mustered up a smile and said, “I can go check it out with you tonight.”

Pedro’s answering grin was relieved and thankful, but he didn’t say anything. It was better that way, Balthazar thought. Saying things, he’d learned, was sometimes too hard.

That evening, they left John behind in the room and set off for the river. The silence that followed them was comfortable. How long had it been, Balthazar wondered, since the last time their mutual silence didn’t feel burdened with unsaid things? The cool night air was refreshing against his skin. Pedro kept his head up, and he didn’t smile, but his expression was serene and possibly even hopeful. For what, Balthazar didn’t know, but he was glad for him anyway.

The river, as they discovered, was more of a creek, and had a little wooden walkway constructed next to it. A ways down, Balthazar could just make out the vague outline of a bridge. They got onto the walkway and started following it wherever it would take them.

“Balthazar,” Pedro said.

Instinctively, Balthazar’s head turned toward him. “Hm?”

Pedro stuck his hands into his pockets. “It’s been a good trip. So far, I mean.”

Balthazar hummed in assent. “Have you talked to John? Like, actually talked to him, I mean.”

“Not yet.” Pedro shook his head. “There’s still time, though.”

Balthazar said nothing, just looked over the side of the walkway at the rushing water next to them. It wasn’t going very fast, but either way he didn’t think he’d like to fall in. He’d never been very strong, and he suspected the current wasn’t as weak as it looked.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Pedro started again.

“Oh, have you, now,” Balthazar said, flat as he could.

“Shut up.” Pedro frowned at him disapprovingly, but still, behind his eyes, Balthazar could see a flicker of humor. “I’ve been thinking…”

Balthazar chose not to answer, now. Pedro needed his time to formulate his words, and Balthazar wanted to give it to him.

“I’ve been thinking – “ Pedro’s voice faltered for the briefest of moments. Then, he took in a deep breath, and seemed to steel himself. “Okay. So, there’s a person I really care about. I want them to be okay. I want that more than anything. I don’t know how to tell them that, though.”

Balthazar could feel his heart relaxing, though he hadn’t known until then that he’d been tense in the first place. But he knew, now, what Pedro was getting at. He hadn’t talked to John yet because he just didn’t know how to say the things he had to. “Just be honest, you know? I know they’d appreciate whatever effort you put into it. Tell them…” He thought for a moment about what he would say to Pedro if he ever thought the words would make a difference. “Tell them you don’t know how much time you have left, but you want to be there for them every second you have left. That has to count for something, right?”

Pedro nodded thoughtfully, and the conversation fell away after that. They walked in the dark.

After a while, Balthazar could feel a shift in Pedro’s demeanor, like he was preparing himself to say something. A few seconds later, he said it.

“Balthazar,” Pedro said quietly.

“What is it?”

“Can we stop here for a minute?”

Balthazar let his motion cease. He turned toward Pedro, and waited.

He waited for a long while. Pedro’s fingers twitched nervously by his sides, but otherwise he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They were standing closer than Balthazar had anticipated, close enough for either of them to reach out and touch hands or arms, if they wanted to. They were close enough for Balthazar to make out the rhythm of Pedro’s breathing.

There was something in Pedro’s eyes Balthazar did not recognize, something that trembled. They did not look apart from each other.

“Balthazar,” Pedro said again, softly. The sound of the syllables of his name leaving Pedro’s mouth sent a shiver down Balthazar’s spine and an ache piercing through his heart.

“Yeah?” He stuttered out the word, in time to the stutter of his pulse.

“Balthazar…” The expression on Pedro’s face now was unbearably soft, and unbearably anticipatory. “I don’t know how much time we have left…”

Balthazar could pinpoint the exact moment his breath froze in his throat.

“But I want to be there,” Pedro continued, softly, “for every second we have left together.”

“John.” It came out as a whisper. How many times had he said this? How many times had he used John as an excuse not to confront whatever it was between him and Pedro? “What about John?”

There was incomprehension on Pedro’s face, then shock. “Balthazar – “

There was so much in Balthazar’s heart, in that moment. So much hope and fear and a want to understand. He wanted to understand Pedro, he wanted to understand what he was thinking and what he wanted from him, and he feared he never would. He had no idea what he was hoping for. Everything swelled up, beat hard against the walls of his chest, and if it burst, he could have everything, or he could lose it all. He felt everything, in that moment; he felt nothing.

“Let’s go back now,” Balthazar said. “We’ve walked enough.”

He turned away without waiting for an answer, or looking to see what Pedro’s face looked like. He didn’t want to know, nor could he do this. He could never, ever do this. Nothing burst in his chest. His pulse chased itself down his veins anyway. He could feel it in his fingertips.

“Balthazar!” Pedro called out. He stopped walking, and couldn’t bring himself to turn around.

“Just use your own words, Pedro,” Balthazar said. Was it desperation in his voice? Perhaps it was fear. “If you stop hiding, I can stop too.”

“Balthazar, I can’t,” Pedro said. He sounded conflicted. Tormented. Balthazar couldn’t breathe.

“Okay,” he managed to get out, and he kept on walking, and didn’t check to see if Pedro was following.

That night in the hotel, Balthazar did not sleep. He listened to the steady rhythms of Pedro and John’s breaths, sometimes in sync with each other but most of the time not, and he stared at the grooves in the ceiling, and thought about what a perfect world would be like, and how this world they lived in was far from perfect.

Why was he there? Why was he in an anonymous hotel room with two boys who were not at all anonymous to him, but in moments like this felt like they should have been? A part of him should have ached for home, if only he actually had one. He had never called any place he’d inhabited his home. Most of the time, it felt like he had no right to. All he knew in that moment was that he didn’t want to be there. He wanted to be anywhere but here, trying and failing to fall asleep in the same room as a boy he had no right to be sleeping next to.

He must have dozed off at some point during the night, because he woke up in the morning to what sounded like a harshly whispered argument. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to find comfort in the darkness behind his eyelids. His head felt heavy, and there was a bad taste in his mouth. His tongue was stiff.

“We can’t leave for the Cottages yet! There’s still – “

“Pedro, please. Just stop.”

“I’m just saying, we haven’t even seen – “

“This clearly isn’t working out! I know why you asked me on this trip. And I can tell you now, it’s not going to work.”

“John – “

“This isn’t working, Pedro! For god’s sake, you’ve bonded better with _Balthazar_ than you ever could with me.”

“… John.”

“What? I’m not wrong. I see _right through you_ , Pedro.”

“Don’t say that to me.”

There was silence, after that. Balthazar opened his eyes. John and Pedro sat at the table next to the window. John was leaning back in his chair, arms folded resolutely across his chest, his face turned toward the wall. Pedro had his hands pressed in fists against his forehead.

“Morning,” Balthazar said.

“Good morning, Balthazar,” John said tonelessly. Pedro said nothing.

Balthazar rubbed at his eyes. He wasn’t going to try to talk to either of them. It would be pointless. Instead, he reached over for his ukulele, straightened up in a sitting position, and began playing a song.

The chords were aimless, but he tried to make them as calm as possible, despite the small storm in his head. He didn’t know if it would work, this attempt to make them stop fighting, just for a minute or so. But there was hushed silence throughout the room, and when he looked up, their shoulders were just a little less tense.

“So I guess we’ll be headed out in a few hours,” Balthazar said. “I can go and check us out.” They needed to talk some more, and they didn’t need him there for that. He set his ukulele on the table between them, shot smiles that were as encouraging as he could make them at Pedro and John, and left the room.

It was not a good sign that they had started the morning like this. He didn’t know how to help them. Really, they could only help themselves.

At the front desk, the receptionist looked him over, vague concern floating across her face. “Are you doing quite all right, sir?” she said.

A loaded question, he thought to himself. To the young woman, he said, “Yes,” and handed over the keys.

Walking back up the stairs, he could hear faint yelling from his floor. As he approached his room, he quickly realized the yelling was coming from his own room.

“You’ve never cared about me, so don’t start pretending like you do!”

“How could you say that? I’ve always cared!”

“You’re a coward. You hide behind other people’s words. You wouldn’t know how to speak for yourself if you tried.”

“And what about you? You don’t _try_ to act normal! You don’t try to put in any effort into this, I’m the only one _trying_ – “

“Trying doesn’t mean shit!”

“Don’t you fucking dare – “

It was then that the voices stopped abruptly. At this point, Balthazar was already outside the room. He opened the door, ready to tell them to quiet down so as not to disturb the guests, and felt the words die in his throat as he took the scene in front of him in.

Pedro and John were both standing, staring at the floor between them in muted shock. And, on the floor between them, was Balthazar’s ukulele, the neck of it snapped cleanly in half, as if it had been thrown to the ground and stepped on. The strings, gleaming dully in the light, still held together the pieces of it.

Balthazar did not cry. Truthfully, he didn’t think he was capable of doing anything. His mind was totally and utterly blank, as was his heart. He did not feel; he did not feel his pulse in his veins. He only stared, stared until his vision blurred and it was impossible to swallow.

At last, he turned around, and walked out of the room.

Almost immediately, Pedro burst out after him. “Balthazar.” He felt a hand on his wrist, but as soon as he turned around, Pedro let go as if touching a hot stove.

“I’ve checked us out of the room,” Balthazar said. He surprised himself with how level his voice sounded. It should be shattered, all things considered, just like his ukulele lying on the floor. “We should leave soon.”

“Balthazar, let me explain – “

“Pedro,” Balthazar said, suddenly very tired, “it doesn’t matter to me who did it.”

Pedro stopped talking, his hands dropping down by his sides. He looked like he understood, and he looked like he did not want to.

“Pedro, I think we should go back to the Cottages,” Balthazar said, turning away. He didn’t say that none of this was working, or that this was a bad idea. Some truths made people bleed, and if there was one thing that was true, that he had learned time and time again, more times than he should have, it was that he did not want Pedro to bleed.

“Yeah.” And with that one syllable filled to the brim with emptiness, all the pain Balthazar had managed to swallow down and pretend at its nonexistence, rose up in his heart, his lungs, his throat, like the tide. He did not cry, would not; but he feared he might stumble if he walked forth, at the sheer force of it.

“Please,” Balthazar said, closing his eyes. “Let’s just get our stuff and go.”

By the time he got back into the room to collect his bag, his ukulele was gone. He did not ask who had done the honors. He did not want to know. He slung his bag over his shoulders and walked out the room, across the hall, down the stairs, to the car.

He sat in the backseat, and John sat next to him. The whole ride home, no words were spoken. Balthazar could see the whiteness of Pedro’s knuckles, around where he squeezed the wheel. He leaned his head against the window and looked at the sky, and thought about how thoroughly they’d spun apart, and how easy it had really been. Years and years of friendship, of closeness, and now they might as well not have spent that time together at all. It was almost frightening how quickly it had happened.

But maybe, Balthazar thought as he kept his eyes on the clouds drifting beyond the horizon, maybe they had always been meant for floating apart. Maybe impermanence was in their very nature, written into their genes. Maybe, for people like them, a handful of years was the longest you ever had, for existing or for anything.

They got back to the Cottages very late that night. Balthazar didn’t stay long enough to know if the other two wanted to say anything, to him or to each other or to the night. He simply took his bag and went into the house.

The next morning, he went to Keffers and asked for an application to become a carer. He was more than ready. They all were, if only they could admit that to themselves.

Asking to leave forever was easier than he thought it would be. Keffers simply mumbled something about paperwork and deadlines and handed Balthazar a small stack of forms. The paperwork, too, was easier to finish than he’d anticipated. It felt like hardly any time had passed before a white van had pulled up in front of the house, promising to take him away to training.

He didn’t talk to Pedro, not once before he left. Everyone else congregated outside the house to see him off. Ursula gave him an astoundingly long hug, Ben clapped him awkwardly on his shoulders, Beatrice gave him her well wishes in a stilted voice, and he did not see Pedro, not outside that house, and not behind his eyelids whenever he closed them. Deep down inside, he was glad for it. It would hurt more than it really needed to, if he had. As it was, he felt nothing as he drove away from the Cottages for the last time. He was glad for that, too. He’d wasted enough time on feelings that didn’t matter.

-

One evening, he walked in to the sound and sight of Ursula crying.

Ursula wasn’t one to cry very often. He’d seen it maybe once or twice before, but it was enough times to know what her hand pressed to her mouth and her silent, shaking shoulders meant.

He sat next to her and waited.

At last, she spoke, her voice flat.

“Why don’t they just call it what it is, Balthazar? They make it sound so clean for us. But it’s not. It’s the ugliest thing in the world.”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t. It was an instinct that had been burrowed into their brains since they’d been old enough to hear things that people said, hidden in hushed conversations and meaningful side-glances. Even now, Ursula couldn’t say what she meant, it was so strong.

But they’d both existed for long enough to know they weren’t good enough for words like life or death.

At last, Ursula took in a long, shuddering breath, and removed her hands from her face. She looked at Balthazar briefly, looked away again.

“It’s sad,” Ursula said finally.

Balthazar blinked. “What’s sad?”

“How normal all of this is.”

He almost wanted to laugh, that was how funny her statement wasn’t.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Balthazar said.

Ursula reached out, her hand trembling, and took hold of Balthazar’s. Her eyes were exhausted, and trembling with sorrow, but sympathetic, endlessly kind. You are one of the best people I’ve ever known, Balthazar wanted to say, and couldn’t. It was too early for words like that. But even at the very end, he suspected he wouldn’t be able to say what he needed to. He’d never been able to.

“You want to know a secret?”

Balthazar stayed silent.

“That’s how we all feel,” Ursula said. “That’s how we know we’re ready.”

In another universe, those words would have been the cruelest she could have said to him. But this was not that universe, and instead of feeling horrified, only a silent kind of comfort flooded Balthazar’s heart.


	6. Part IV part i - We All Complete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to him, then, that perhaps time hadn’t pushed them apart, as he’d originally assumed. Perhaps time faded the edges of bitter wounds, erased the worst of memories and replaced them with longing. Perhaps time had not widened the gap between them. Perhaps time had bridged it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Companion gifset](http://douchenuts.tumblr.com/post/147961716807/is-it-the-right-word-were-going-to-the-ocean) by Crystal.

**[Part IV – We All Complete](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve81_Zc5oCU) **

_“What I'm not sure about is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete.”_

-

_i._

The aftermath of Ursula’s third operation settled into a sober sort of quiet. Balthazar cut down on the number of patients he was looking after so he could care for Ursula more closely, the usual informal policy he enforced on himself when he had a patient who made it to the fourth donation. There were no more opportunities to go to the beach or anywhere else, and for the most part Ursula just stayed in her room. Sometimes they still went on walks around the grounds, but she clung to his elbow, and had to sit down often, and never stayed outside for very long.

He brought more books for her, stacks and stacks of them. More often than not, he stayed by her side, and they read into the night.

One afternoon, the rain fell softly against the windowpane, staining it with droplets of pale water that sat suspended on the glass of the window before racing down gently to the bottom. Balthazar found himself staring at those raindrops frequently, tracing their crystal pathways with his eyes down to where they disappeared beyond the sill.

“Do you still have any of the pictures I gave you? For your eighteenth birthday?”

Balthazar looked away from the window. Ursula met his gaze steadily.

“I, uh… I’ll have to check. At my place, I mean. Why?”

Ursula leaned back against her pillows. “I don’t have any left. From the Cottages, I mean. I guess I just… want to stop forgetting. Before it’s too late.”

Balthazar knew something about that, he thought, wanting to stop forgetting. He knew something about wanting to forget in the first place, too. He didn’t know which was worse, anymore. He used to think he did.

He drove to his flat that night and looked through his things as carefully as he could. At the bottom of his trunk, he unearthed a single dusty picture. When he brought it under the dim light of his bedside lamp, what he found surprised a smile out of him, sad as it might have been.

He showed Ursula the photograph the next day. She ran her thin fingers over it, over the faces frozen in a happy moment they would never know didn’t last. It was all of them, all of the ones he knew at the Cottages, grouped together in the common room of their house. Hero and John were in there, too. Even Ursula appeared in it, her forehead and her eyes visible in the corner of the picture. It hadn’t been a planned one, clearly. Their laughter, their smiles, were too genuine for that.

“It was the only one I could find,” he said. She looked up at him, her eyes shining.

He found a picture frame for it, and it sat on the table next to her bed from then on.

-

For the most part, being a carer suited Balthazar just fine.

Some people didn’t like the solitude, the long car drives and the hours spent by yourself. Some people were overwhelmed by how much you had to do on your own, after listening to what other people told you to do since before you could even remember. And for some people, the job just wore you down after a while.

After a few months, then a year, and then another few years, Balthazar figured it would take a lot more than loneliness to wear him down. He’d had a little trouble at the beginning figuring out exactly how to deal with the doctors, and of course there were always ups and downs when it came to actually caring for another person, but it didn’t take him long for him to get by on his own. There were rules he made for himself at the very beginning, rules he wrote into the walls of his thoughts and that he repeated to himself until they came up in just about anything he did. The most important one was that he could only expect himself to do his best for his patients, not any worse than that, and certainly not any better. And he had to listen to his patients. It was about them, always, and never for a second about him.

He developed a good sense for the more difficult aspects of his job, after a while, knowing when to let the patients talk to him and when to leave them their space, when the right time to leave the patient for good would be, figuring out exactly what small joys he could bring them, even if they never said. He got the impression that whoever evaluated his work was generally pleased with what he’d done, and he was so busy that it was all too easy to put everything else about his existence – himself – behind him. He wasn’t just Balthazar J, not anymore. He was a carer, and there was work to be done.

He spent most of his time in hospitals now, or driving to hospitals. He brought in enough income to get his own place early on, but he found he didn’t enjoy spending too much time there on his own. On the nights he found himself with hours to spare in his flat, he’d always feel jittery, become consumed with all the thoughts about the work he could be doing right then. A long time ago, it was music that consumed his thoughts and inclinations like that. Now, he had caring to fill the hole inside him.

Balthazar had been working for a good while, maybe three or four years, before he noticed he began to have a small measure of influence over who he could choose to care for. At first, it was as small as a secretary asking him offhand if he wanted more work or not. It progressed after that, to forms that indicated his preferences for hospitals and a casual inquiry about whether he wanted to take this patient on or that one, until finally secretaries began asking him directly, after one of his spots opened up, if there was someone specific he wanted to take on.

When offered the choice, he would try to go for someone he recognized from the Fields, or the Cottages, and if he couldn’t he usually just passed up the opportunity. Perhaps it was selfish of him. Then again, he didn’t much care what others thought of his choices. They weren’t the ones who needed to know his reasons.

Though he rarely encountered his friends from before, it was sometimes known to happen.

The first time it happened was shortly after he’d begun his fifth year working. Certainly, it hadn’t been something he’d planned on, but he happened to catch a glimpse of Beatrice D across the parking lot right before he climbed into his own car. It took him only a second to decide to greet her, and after a few minutes of warm conversation, they decided to grab a quick cup of coffee and a chat.

They drove to a nearby coffee shop and sat down at a table next to the window. After another bit of talking, a shadow seemed to fall over Beatrice’s face, and she stared off into the distance, expression blank.

“Hey, Beatrice, you all right?” Balthazar said, concerned.

“Yeah, just…” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “I suppose I might as well tell you. I got my first letter a while back. I’m to stop caring near the end of the year.”

“Oh.” In their line of work, apologies were both unnecessary and unwanted. There was nothing particularly sad, or even particularly joyous, about going in for your first donation. It just sort of happened to you. “That’s coming up fast.”

“Yeah.” She gave a little shrug, and a ghost of a smile floated onto her face. “In a way, I’m sort of glad. All of this gets tiring after a while, you know? It just – it feels _right_ to be stopping soon. I can’t really explain it.”

The circles under her eyes were pronounced, and she hadn’t really smiled the whole time they’d talked. She used to be one of the most colorful people he knew, back at the Cottages, down to the clothing she wore. Now, she was wrapped up in a gray jacket, her hair pinned to her head in a tight bun.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said, even though he didn’t, not really, not yet.

They were silent for a while, Beatrice stirring at her coffee absent-mindedly.

“Have you heard anything about the others?” Balthazar tried.

Beatrice glanced up at him.

“Yeah, that’s, uh, something I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

“Really,” Balthazar said, lifting an eyebrow.

“You know, people say things about you, Balthazar,” Beatrice said, nodding vaguely in his direction. “Good things, I mean. That you’re so good at what you do they let you choose your own donors, sometimes.”

It was quiet, save the hushed chatter of the other coffeehouse patrons, and the clatter of Beatrice’s spoon around her cup.

“It has been known to happen,” Balthazar said carefully.

“Well, I’ve been hearing other things, too.” Beatrice looked up from her coffee. “Did you hear John D’s at Messina Recovery Center?”

John D. He hadn’t heard that name in a long time. It was a fairly common one, he imagined, but of course he knew exactly who she was talking about.

“Yeah, I did, a while back, I think,” he said with a brief nod. “So what about him?”

“Nothing in particular, I guess.” Beatrice shrugged. “You’re good at your job, though, aren’t you? You should consider taking him on. You know, if they really do let you pick your donors. I think he had his first a while back. He’s had a lot of trouble keeping his carers. I’ve heard he’s gone through at least two or three since the operation. It might be good for him, if you were his carer. Familiar face and all that.”

“I don’t know if it would be,” Balthazar hedged. Five years it had been, since the last time he’d seen John. Five years since he’d seen any of them.

“Well, it’s worth a try, but really, it’s up to you,” Beatrice said, shrugging again.

“Sure.” He looked down at his coffee, considering the past few minutes of conversation carefully. “John can’t have been the only person you’ve heard from.”

“Yeah, Hero’s still going strong,” Beatrice said, the corner of her mouth lifting up again. “She’s great at what she does, to no one’s surprise. What are the chances I can snatch her up for my carer, do you think?”

“Approximately zero, with our kind of luck,” Balthazar said.

“Ah, well, that’s too bad,” Beatrice said, rolling her eyes. “But yeah. I’ve been keeping up with people fairly well, I’d think. Better than most people, anyway. I just figured it’s going to take a lot more than busy schedules and faraway hospitals to keep me away from people like Hero. We send each other letters, you know. Even if we don’t see each other in months, at least we have something to look forward to.”

“That’s good to hear.” Of all the people he had ever known, Beatrice seemed like the kind of person who would be strong-willed enough to keep in touch with the people she wanted to. “Ben H?”

Beatrice suddenly looked incredibly fascinated with her coffee straw.

“Bea?”

“Yeah, he’s… We’re good.” She looked up, and Balthazar was almost surprised to see brightness in her eyes, sudden as it was. In another sense, though, he definitely wasn’t. “You know, we got our letters at the same time? With the same date? He says he’ll hack into the system so we can get assigned to the same recovery center, if he has to.”

The sentiment was, oddly, sort of sweet. “At least you’ll have each other,” Balthazar said.

“Oh, gross.” But she smiled.

“And…” He hesitated. “And Pedro D?”

“Oh.” Her eyes softened, for a brief moment. “No, I haven’t heard anything. He broke off contact with us all, when he left the Cottages. It wasn’t long after you, you know. I can remember that much, after all of these years.”

It had been five years, and a statement like that was enough to set his heartbeat running just a little faster.

“And he doesn’t go by Pedro anymore,” Beatrice continued, a tiny crease of a frown between her brows. “Or, at least, right before he left, he told us all to stop calling him that. He left the Cottages as Peter.”

He felt those words somewhere inside him, like a punch to a gut, or a slash to the heart; but faint, as if miles away, somewhere unfathomably deep in the wasteland of his insides.

“I see,” he said.

“I suppose that means you haven’t heard from him either, then?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

She looked almost sympathetic for a brief moment. Then, she looked down at the watch around her wrist. “Well, I really ought to be going now. It was lovely to catch up with you again. We should do this again.”

Balthazar agreed, even going so far as to accept her number written on a scrap of a napkin, though they both knew their efforts and promises were effectively useless. Still, they parted on good terms, and he drove away with a sense of ease he hadn’t known for a long while.

That night, though, he found it near impossible to sleep. The covers were too warm; when he took them off, he was much too cold. The moon flooded his room with cold light he found distracting, but when he drew the curtains, it was suddenly much too dark. And, of course, his thoughts went round and round in circles, never-ending, infinite strings of hypotheticals and uncertainty he was never quite able to resolve.

It had been a long time since he had trouble falling asleep thanks to long-lasting thoughts about another boy. Though he supposed they weren’t boys anymore. He supposed if he ever saw Pedro – Peter – again, he might almost be unrecognizable.

Truthfully, even if he might not have consciously admitted it to himself, he had already been considering signing on to be John’s carer, ever since he’d heard about John being admitted to Messina Recovery Center a few weeks prior. The conversation with Beatrice, however, had brought the issue to the forefront of his mind, and now that it was there, he couldn’t quite let go of the notion, even though he strongly suspected that it was for the best if he did.

He told himself he would think about it, really think about it. He deserved the time he spent thinking about it. They both did. And yet, if he was being honest to himself, he didn’t really have to think about it, in the end.

The next week, he paid a visit to Messina Recovery Center to see what he could do. The paperwork he had to fill out was practically second nature to him, and in a startlingly short amount of time, he managed to transfer John – who was currently in some sort of interim purgatory with regards to carers – to his supervision.

Walking into John’s room, seeing him for the first time in years, was a surreal experience, not because of all the time that had passed between them, but because it felt like no time had passed at all. John looked about the same as the last time they’d met, tall and scrawny limbs, a mess of tangled hair about his head, dark shadows imprinted under his eyes. If anything, he actually looked younger than before – smaller, in demeanor rather than build, but also willing to smile when Balthazar entered the room.

They shook hands, and Balthazar pulled John into a clumsy embrace. When they pulled apart, John looked him over and said, “Well, you look different.”

“That’s nice of you,” Balthazar said, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I mean that in a – not a bad way.” John shuffled over to the bed and sat down on it. Balthazar did not miss his wince as he did so. “You look like you’ve been taking care of yourself.”

Balthazar wasn’t sure if it was all right for him to sit down next to John, so he walked over to the glass door on the other side of the room. John was lucky enough to have a room with a balcony. It was large enough for two chairs to sit comfortably side by side, with a concrete rise that came up to about the middle of Balthazar’s chest. They were high up enough that he was eye level with the treetops of the neighboring forest.

“Yeah, I suppose I have,” he said.

“That’s good.”

There was a pause, then, brief and almost tangibly awkward.

“You, on the other hand,” Balthazar said, turning around, “have barely changed at all.”

“So I’ve been told,” John said, cautiously smiling in response.

“Would you like something to drink or eat?” Balthazar said. “I could use a coffee, myself.”

“You know,” John said slowly, “There’s a lot of things they don’t tell you about being hospitalized, but this is one thing I especially regret not knowing.”

“And what’s that?” Balthazar said, bemused.

“Hospital food is utter shit,” John said with a straight face. It was enough to surprise a laugh out of Balthazar, a good, genuine laugh. He hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.

When Balthazar returned from the cafeteria, he found John sitting outside on the balcony. With some resolve, he walked over and joined him.

They sat in long silence, Balthazar sipping occasionally at his coffee, John picking at the chips Balthazar had gotten him from the vending machine. It was quickly approaching evening, and the clouds were hanging solemnly in the sky. Balthazar didn’t mind clouds, really. Some of his colleagues said cloudy days were sad days, but he’d always found an overcast sky, in regards to his feelings, rather apt.

“Can I ask you something?” Balthazar said.

John said nothing in response, which Balthazar took as permission.

“How’ve you been doing?”

There was silence for a while longer, and Balthazar was almost afraid John had chosen to refuse his conversation entirely.

Then, he heard a prolonged exhale, and John spoke.

“Busy, I guess. Like the rest of us. I don’t know.”

“Are you happy? Sad?”

“Are you?” John returned.

There wasn’t really anything to be said to that. Balthazar didn’t know if there was an answer he could give, even a poor one. He supposed it was only fair that he assumed John felt the same away about the question.

“I don’t know,” John said again. “Neither. I suppose I liked the work of caring well enough, but I was glad to be done with it. I’m not as suited to it as you.”

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. “And how would you know I’m suited to caring?”

John shrugged. “If you’re careful enough, you hear things. I hear about you enough to know. Anyway, you’re the one who transferred me into your care, right? I don’t know what it takes to be able to pick your own donors, but it takes _something_.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t really know.” Balthazar hummed to himself. “I do enjoy the work, though. It’s… well, not all the time, but sometimes, it’s really peaceful. Like when you’re driving by yourself, and you still have a long way to go to wherever it is you need to be, and the road is quiet and winding, and you just go for miles and miles…”

He trailed off into silence. Caring wasn’t a topic he usually brought up with his new patients, in case they weren’t happy with not being carers anymore. There was a certain kind of comfort in being able to talk about things like this to people you once knew well, though. As if time and distance hadn’t been enough to truly keep you apart.

“Is it really caring that you like, then?”

Balthazar frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Carers don’t focus on how lonely they are,” John said, staring at him pointedly. “That’s not what caring is about.”

“And how would you know what caring is about?” Balthazar said, mild irritation flaring up.

John didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry,” Balthazar said, looking down at the ground. “That was uncalled for.”

“I just mean…” John exhaled. “Well, I guess I mean, what’s keeping you coming back to hospitals? What’s keeping you from not driving for miles and miles?”

“I guess – “ Balthazar had never really thought about it, but the answer came to him remarkably easily. “I guess I just want to go wherever it is I have to be. I feel responsible for that.”

John looked over at him. “Have you ever thought about _not_ going wherever it is you had to be?” John said. “What’s stopping you, really?”

“No, I can’t say it’s occurred to me that much.” Balthazar looked down at his hands. “I couldn’t just leave my patients like that. I mean, I suppose it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to get someone else, but – I dunno. It’s a responsibility, you know? I don’t want to be the kind of person who leaves someone when they need me the most.”

As soon as he said the words, he could feel the irony that twisted around them, cold and settling unpleasantly in his stomach. He knew John could probably feel it too.

“I suppose I get it.” John’s voice sounded far away. A heartbeat later, his gaze flickered toward Balthazar, and his tone returned to normal. “I almost wish I could know what that feels like.”

Balthazar didn’t know how to answer that, didn’t know what to do to help John. He could barely deal with the things he himself felt and didn’t feel.

Before he could come up with words to fill up the silence, John spoke again. “You’ve been in love, haven’t you, Balthazar?”

Before he could stop it from happening, images and memories flooded Balthazar’s skull. A ukulele sitting in the tall yellow grass, sweaty fingers he’d held in the dark once upon a time, stacks and stacks of cassette tapes of songs he’d listened to on repeat and songs he’d never heard of, an ocean he’d never been to but had been promised over and over…

“Yeah.” The word felt entirely inadequate, compared to the feelings in his heart and his chest. But there were no words to describe them, none at all.

“Tell me what it’s like.”

 “It’s like…” Balthazar leaned back in his seat. No words, but he could try, at least. “Like learning the name to a song you’ve known your whole existence.”

John was quiet for a beat. “That sounds nice.”

“But…” Balthazar took in a deep breath, and was almost surprised it didn’t hurt. “Most of the time, you can’t remember the words to the song, even if you feel like they’re on the tip of your tongue.”

“Oh.” He didn’t sound terribly happy to hear that. But then, maybe Balthazar wasn’t as interested anymore in happiness as he was the truth. Maybe that’s just what happened when you got older.

“Why do you ask?”

John turned his head to look at him, and Balthazar found he couldn’t look away. When he spoke, Balthazar knew he spoke honestly.

“I was never in love,” John said. “I never will be, probably.”

Good for you, Balthazar almost joked. He didn’t answer.

“That’s okay, isn’t it?” John asked, solemn-eyed. Balthazar didn’t know if he was the right person to be seeking validation from, but he could be honest, at least, and that had to count for something.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said. “That’s okay.”

John changed the subject soon after that, and their conversation was banal, wandering idly from one vague recollection to the next. They reminisced about the past few years, and Balthazar was sorry he’d missed John during all that time, but he didn’t regret taking the chance to see him now.

After that, Balthazar came by two or three times a week, bringing along a cup of coffee for himself and a bag of chips for John so they could sit on the balcony to talk about the past, or Balthazar gave John a book he could read, or they took a walk around the grounds. Despite the space that had separated them for years, it didn’t take long for the time they spent together to feel familiar, if not the same as it was before.

In their early conversations, Balthazar brought Peter up exactly once. It was during one of their evening balcony chats, and the gnawing he’d felt at his bones for weeks now was something he couldn’t ignore anymore.

“I don’t expect you to know anything about where Peter is,” Balthazar said, as casually as he could.

Immediately, he could feel John tensing up next to him. “You’d have the right expectations, then.”

“Right.” Balthazar hesitated. “I just… Do you know if he was all right? After I left?”

“What do you care?” John said, his voice flat.

The words hurt more than he could have expected.

“I’m sorry.” John looked away. “That wasn’t fair of me.”

“I don’t know if I have the right to judge what’s fair or not,” Balthazar said, eyes on his hands.

“I genuinely don’t know.” Was that the barest hint of remorse in John’s voice? The moment passed before Balthazar could really tell. “We’d been drifting apart for a long while, but after you left, it felt – well, I think both of us knew whatever we tried to get closer again, it wouldn’t work.”

Balthazar nodded. “And you thought you could fix it before?”

“I thought a lot of things, before.” John snorted self-deprecatingly.

“And?”

“Honestly, Balthazar?” John shrugged. “You’re better off not knowing.”

Balthazar left it at that because John didn’t seem willing to linger on the topic any more than they had to, but he couldn’t stop thinking, about discarded names or the nameless feelings of a person he hadn’t talked to or even seen in years or anything.

“Why did he stop going by Pedro?” Balthazar asked, almost impulsively.

John was silent, for a while. When he spoke, his voice could have almost resembled something compassionate.

“I think you know the answer to that question,” John said. “You always knew him better than anyone else did. Even me.”

There was nothing Balthazar could say to that. He resolved not to bring up Peter again.

Not to say, of course, that he didn’t come up at all. One evening a few weeks after, Balthazar walked in to John laying in his bed. His face was turned toward the window, and Balthazar had no idea what the expression on his face meant.

“I heard something interesting today, Balthazar,” John said.

Balthazar paused at the threshold. “And what’s that?”

“There’s someone transferring to Messina soon. Someone who needs a carer. He’s just had his second operation, you know.”

Everything in Balthazar ground to a halt. Silence echoed in his head.

“What do you think, Balthazar?” John said to the window. “Are you going to do anything about it?”

To answer that question, Balthazar thought with a desperate sort of fierceness, required months and years he didn’t have. That was how long it would take him to know the right response, if there was even a chance of knowing what the right response was.

“I should like to see him, I think,” John said. “It’s all right to visit your fellow donors in their rooms, isn’t it? As long as we’re supervised by a carer. Have you ever cared for donors in the same center?”

“I didn’t know he was already donating,” Balthazar said.

There was a heaviness to the silence that followed those words. Balthazar didn’t move, couldn’t; the joints of his bones felt stuck, frozen in time and space. He was clutching the door knob, which he hadn’t yet let go of, so hard his hand hurt.

“I didn’t either,” John said finally.

“How did you hear about it, then?” Balthazar asked. And how had he not?

“You hear things, when you’re a donor,” John said. “People aren’t careful about what they talk about when they’re around you. Gossip travels fast among us donors, you know. It’s like a virus.”

Did John think about what he was really doing, when he distanced himself from Balthazar like that? When he compared what they were to disease?

“Do you know – when is he…”

“No, I don’t know,” John said softly. He turned his head and looked at Balthazar. The look was enough, finally, for Balthazar to relax his grip on the doorknob. His lungs came to life once more.

“Okay,” Balthazar said. “Okay.”

He walked over to the window, staring out over the treetops, and he felt normal again. He felt the way he was supposed to feel, which meant that he felt nothing at all. The surface of his heart was still once more, like the water of a pond on a cloudless day. There was no sign that it had ever been disturbed, that a stone had once broken its veil of calm and rippled outward in ceaseless motion; his insides were windless.

“I’m not sure you even need supervision to visit with another patient,” Balthazar said. His voice was faint, though whether out loud or just to himself he couldn’t tell.

“In the yard, perhaps,” John said, “but I don’t think Peter would want either of us to show up at his room unannounced.”

He had heard that name before. He’d even said it before, with his own voice, yet when the name left John’s lips, in that moment, it sounded like thunder.

“I think it would be good for you to see him,” Balthazar said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” John said, almost sardonically. “That it has.”

Balthazar did not apply to be Peter’s carer, though the secretary did ask, as they asked him whenever he had an open slot and there were new donors scheduled to arrive at whatever center he was at. He figured that this – regularly appearing by Peter’s side, after years of silence – was something Peter should have the right to choose, and he didn’t feel comfortable making that choice for him. People like them were rarely offered the luxury of choice to begin with.

And at night, when he returned to his flat, he found himself turning over the same questions in my mind, over and over again – what was the proper way to meet him again? _Should_ they even meet again? Should he just continue with being John’s carer and pretend he didn’t know Peter was at Messina? Or if they did see each other again, what would he even say? What could bridge the gap five years had widened between them, a gap that had already felt impassable before? What could possibly have made up for all he had done, and all he had said?

As it turned out, he need not have worried, or questioned.

The next time he came in to see John, he could hear quiet voices behind the door before he approached. They were too muffled for him to make out what they were, and he was somewhat bemused. Who could possibly be seeing John at this time who wasn’t him?

Balthazar opened the door, and the first pair of eyes that locked onto his were not John’s, but Peter’s.

He froze in the doorway, and his heart froze in his chest.

Slowly, Peter stood up from where he sat. His hair was much shorter than the last time they’d met, closely shaven to his skull, and his cheekbones were sharper. Other than that, though, the details of his face, the intensity of his gaze, might have been lifted off an old photograph. He looked just as Balthazar remembered, except the smile that crept on his face, the vitality in the set of his shoulders and the whole stance of his body, was more vibrant than anything he could ever have constructed, in his well-worn thoughts or in his wildest dreams.

“Balthazar,” Peter said, and his voice was as familiar as heartache, as distant as mountains.

Balthazar was painfully aware, then, of all the ways that they were the same, and all the ways they were different. He didn’t know how much he himself had changed the past five years; how did someone judge that about themselves? But here was a man who he’d known in his youth, who he felt he should know better than himself, yet who he didn’t really know at all, not anymore.

Balthazar cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Peter,” he said, extending his hand. “You look well.”

Peter looked down at his hand, considered it briefly, then bridged the gap between them and pulled him in for an embrace.

The motion was too sudden for Balthazar to comprehend until Peter’s arms were already around him, but once he understood what was going on he had the sudden sense that this was how it was supposed to be, and how it should have been.

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” Peter said, grin still sharp on his face as he stepped away.

“Maybe not,” Balthazar said, and he finally allowed himself a small smile back. It felt better than he remembered or expected, to smile at Peter.

“And what about me?” John spoke up from the bed, and they all laughed, maybe harder than they should have.

It occurred to him, then, that perhaps time hadn’t pushed them apart, as he’d originally assumed. Perhaps time faded the edges of bitter wounds, erased the worst of memories and replaced them with longing. Perhaps time had not widened the gap between them. Perhaps time had bridged it.

Balthazar pulled up a chair and they all sat together in John’s room, talking. It was raining outside, the drops tapping lightly against the glass of John’s windows, but the sky was pale, and the room felt light.

“If I’m going to be honest, I was pretty shit at being carer,” Peter said, leaning back in his chair with a short laugh. “I’m a much better donor, I think.”

“Nah, I can’t believe you’d be bad at anything you’ve ever tried,” Balthazar said. “You do look in good shape for two donations, though. Honestly, I’d have pegged you for one, or none, even.”

“Yeah, that’s what the doctors’ve always said,” Peter said, grinning. “Impressed at my brute strength, I think.”

“Oh, but who wouldn’t be?” John said.

“And you?” Peter said to Balthazar, ignoring John. “How have you been?”

Balthazar shrugged. “I guess I’ve mostly just been doing my own thing,” Balthazar said. “Keeping busy. It’s good, I think. Keeps my head where it needs to be.”

“And where’s that?” Peter asked.

There were a myriad of things he could say. Things that could hurt. Things that didn’t mean anything at all.

“On my shoulders,” Balthazar answered with a half-smile.

“The cleverness kills me,” John said, deadpan.

Peter rolled his eyes, but the smile was still there on his face, if not on his mouth then in the lines of his face. There was a certain sort of depth to it that Balthazar didn’t recognize. Balthazar was used to fake smiles, in his memories and his imagination, but this was not a fake smile. This was a Peter to whom real smiles came more readily to than fake smiles. This was a Peter Balthazar did not know, and this was a Peter Balthazar wanted to know more about.

“Say, Balthazar,” Peter said, the tone of his voice casual, “you still play your music now, don’t you?”

Images of a broken ukulele, bits of wood scattered about the floor, flashed across Balthazar’s memories, unbidden.

“No, actually,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”

For the first time since meeting him again, Peter looked stricken. The smile slowly left his face. “Really? Why not?”

Balthazar shrugged. “You know how busy caring gets. No available time, no available instruments… It doesn’t exactly pay well, you know. Caring, I mean.”

The room was silent for a moment, and still. Even John didn’t seem to know how to react to Balthazar’s statements. He felt strange, in that time, awkward, like his clothes didn’t fit him. He didn’t know why it mattered to them so much that he should be playing music. He hadn’t played since the Cottages, but that was fine. Hospitals didn’t have pianos, and he just didn’t have the time. Anyway, he had never even been that good. He’d suspected for a long time people just went along with his notions of becoming a musician because, in some way, deluding himself into thinking it was in any way possible, no matter how remote, allowed others to believe in that delusion, too – to believe that something more, more meaningful and more beautiful and just _more_ , was within their reach.

They should have all learned by now, as Balthazar had. There was nothing more than this. There was only caring, and then donations, and then completion. And that was fine. He was fine with an existence like that. And, really, he didn’t think they had even believed in the idea of something more to begin with. Maybe they’d just pretended. He could believe that.

“You could sing,” Peter suggested half-heartedly.

Balthazar only shook his head. He hadn’t done much more with his voice than talk to doctors and patients for years, now.

They exchanged a few more pleasantries, after that, but it was clear that the most important part of the conversation was over. It wasn’t long before Peter decided to go back to his room.

“Could you walk me back?” Peter said, almost apologetically. “My carer isn’t here today, and you know they don’t like donors wandering about the hospital unsupervised…”

“Uh, will you be fine here on your own, for a bit?” Balthazar said to John, who just nodded in response. Balthazar and Peter left the room.

They did not speak, for a while. Balthazar mostly followed Peter to his room, who seemed to know his way around Messina better than he did. Certainly, Balthazar had never had that many patients in this center before, so he wondered.

“Did you care for a lot of donors here?” Balthazar said.

Peter glanced at him briefly. “My fair share, I suppose.” He laughed quietly. “They liked me a lot around here, though I wasn’t the greatest at my job. The staff has always been incredibly kind to me. Why do you ask?”

“You seem to know where you’re going. Better than I do, at least.” Balthazar smiled to himself. “The patient leading the carer. Who would have imagined.”

Peter laughed again. “Well, then, maybe I do. My room’s up here, if you…?”

The first thing that struck Balthazar about Peter’s room was how bare its white walls were. It wasn’t like that was abnormal, of course. Donors were rarely allowed to decorate their rooms more than the odd knick knack here or there. But in Balthazar’s memory, Peter was so vibrant it was almost unfathomable that any room he inhabited wouldn’t be the same, and here was proof in front of his eyes that he was wrong.

It was bigger than John’s, big enough to contain a small desk by the window, though it had no balcony. He could see an array of papers scattered about the surface of Peter’s desk, the writing on none of which he could distinguish.

“Would you like to sit down?” Peter said, going over to his chair at the desk. “Make yourself comfortable?”

“Only for a bit. I should be getting back to John pretty soon, I think.” Balthazar walked over to the bed and took his seat.

“I like the view in John’s room a lot better than mine,” Peter said. “He gets this nice forest and a balcony, to boot. All I get is the road. Maybe a bit of parking lot?”

“Some are luckier than others, I suppose,” Balthazar said.

“Yeah.” The look Peter gave him was curious, but he didn’t say anything more than that.

“You know,” Balthazar said, slowly, “it was nice to see you again.”

“Yeah,” Peter said with an enthusiastic nod. “It’s been way too long. I don’t know why we didn’t keep in touch.”

That was a lie. They both knew.

“When I heard you were coming to this hospital, they asked me to be your carer.” Balthazar looked down at his hands. “Because I had an available spot, you know. I didn’t accept.”

Silence, for a bit. “And why’s that?”

“I figured it was something I should ask you in person.” Balthazar looked up at Peter. It seemed to catch him off guard; Peter’s eyes widened. “It’s only fair, I think, to give you the choice of having me as your carer or not. That way, you’re prepared for it.”

“Balthazar,” Peter said, “I’d never say no to you.”

He looked away, then, abashed, as if he’d said too much.

“Oh,” Balthazar said. His heart was static, too big for his chest all of a sudden. He didn’t know what to think, or how to answer.

“I think you should be getting back to John.” Peter did not look up. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” Balthazar said. “That’s probably for the best.”

He stood up, and it was a wonder he did not tremble, but he did not complain, and he left the room without argument.

How strange it was, and how unfair, that he could never pretend at normalcy around someone like Peter. How strange and how unfair it was that Peter didn’t have to try, not even a little bit, to send all the walls he’d built around himself tumbling down. All it took from him, all it had ever taken, was a handful of words.

When he got back to John’s room, they didn’t say anything more about Peter’s presence at the hospital, but John looked as if he just _knew_. His eyes were inscrutable, and they were sad. About what, Balthazar couldn’t begin to guess at.

The next few weeks were spent preparing for John’s next donation. It was going to take place in a few months or so, but because his first donation had left him so weak, John needed more tests than usual. Some of them were routine and relatively painless, but others took a real toll on John. On those days, he wasn’t even strong enough to walk out in the yard. On those days Balthazar just sat by his bed and read to him and tried not to feel sorry for him, because there were many things that were useless to patients, but pity was probably the most useless of all.

If Peter visited John at this time, he always went when Balthazar wasn’t there. John didn’t tell him if he had or not, and Balthazar never asked. It wasn’t his place to.

Not to say that they didn’t talk about Peter at all. In fact, now that Peter was actually here, in their vicinity, he almost became a favorite conversation topic.

“What do you think, Balthazar?” John said one evening, his voice subdued. “Has he changed at all?”

Balthazar didn’t have to ask who he meant.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I want to believe he has.”

“Why?” John said, tilting his head. “Why do you want to believe that?”

He could say something acceptable, something safe. Or he could tell the truth.

“Because I’m not the same,” Balthazar said, avoiding John’s eye. “And I’m selfish enough to want five years to do the same to him as it has to me.”

“Oh.” John sounded thoughtful. “I don’t think that’s selfish. I just think it’s inevitable. That’s the kind of time that changes everyone.”

“But it’s more than that,” Balthazar mumbled at his hands. “Because if I’ve changed, and he has too, then maybe we could…”

“Could what?”

Balthazar shook his head. “Never mind.” It was too difficult for him to finish the sentence.

When he looked back up at John, the other man looked solemn. “I think I know a little about what you mean,” John said. “The idea that I’ve _changed_ is a pleasant one. I’m not sure I like the person I used to be. I’m not sure if I’m not that person anymore.”

Balthazar should have felt sad to hear something like that. But honestly, the way John said that just made sense.

“I think I would like to go to the ocean with the both of you, before my second donation,” John said. “Before it all ends. Wasn’t it something we spoke of, when we were boys? I confess, I don’t remember that well.”

“You make it sound so permanent,” Balthazar said, as lightly as it was possible to. “It’s only your second donation.”

“Isn’t it, Balthazar?” John said, and he looked straight into his eyes, as if he knew the future.

Knowing the future, knowing what the end was and when it was coming, was impossible. Yet Balthazar could not stop the chill that slid down his spine, at that look.

“I’m sure I could arrange it,” Balthazar said, his mouth dry. “We’d have to ask him, though. He might not…”

“He might surprise you, I think.” The corner of John’s lips quirked up. “Or maybe not.”

John changed the subject shortly after that, but by the end of the night there was some sort of unspoken agreement between them that Balthazar would start working on the proper arrangements. Honestly, he wasn’t sure of many parts to the plan – would they let someone as frail as John leave Messina? Would they let a carer supervise someone who wasn’t his patient?

Would Peter even agree to this?

The next time he was at Messina, after Balthazar made sure John was as settled in as it was possible to be, he stopped by Peter’s room. He almost faltered before knocking on his door, the feeling that this might be the wrong decision welling up so intensely it almost crippled him. Then the moment passed, and he let his knuckles rap on the surface of the wood.

A few seconds passed, and it opened. In that moment, Peter was about a foot away from him, perhaps the shortest distance they’d had between them in a very long while. Having him so close was almost startling for the briefest of moments. Balthazar was taken aback by how solid and how sudden Peter’s appearance was. He hadn’t noticed how much his shoulders had broadened, before then. He hadn’t noticed how healthy, how _alive_ he looked, in spite of two donations.

“Balthazar,” Peter said, surprise clear in his eyes.

“Oh, yeah, uh, can I come in?” Balthazar twisted his hands together. “I need to, um, ask you something. On John’s behalf, I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Peter said, waving him in. Like before, Balthazar took his seat on the neatly made bed, but this time Peter sat next to him. It was impossible to even think about looking at him, not now when he was so close. Balthazar feared the things he could see in Peter’s eyes, at this distance.

“So what’s up?” Peter said quietly. The tone of his voice was because he didn’t have to speak any louder, but despite knowing that, despite all the logic in the world, Balthazar’s pulse picked up.

“John’s second donation is coming up soon,” Balthazar said. As soon as the words left his mouth, they felt totally unnecessary. Of course Peter would know that. When you lived in the same center as someone, especially if it was someone you knew from before, it was practically impossible not to hear news of that sort. Balthazar felt almost stupid for saying it, and then he felt even more stupid for caring about it in the first place.

He was so busy being preoccupied by his own thoughts that he didn’t notice that Peter hadn’t responded until it occurred to him that all he’d heard for the past few moments was silence.

“Peter?” he said tentatively.

“Sorry, I just – “ Peter shook his head. “Go on.”

“Well, okay,” Balthazar said, chewing at his lip. “Anyway, John said – well, remember when we used to say that we’d go to the ocean one day?”

“Yeah.” Peter laughed softly to himself. “Of course I remember.”

“I think John wants to go,” Balthazar said. “With us, I mean. Before it’s not possible anymore.”

“Oh.” He paused briefly. “I see.”

“Do you – would you like to come with us?” Balthazar asked, feeling strangely helpless, almost stranded by his own words. “You don’t have to, of course. But – I mean to say, we’d love to have you. If you want to go.”

At last, Balthazar felt brave enough to look at Peter, but when he did, Peter wasn’t looking back. His gaze was turned toward the window, and he looked thoughtful, and distant.

“Yeah,” Peter said. There was something indecipherable in his voice – like nostalgia, but somehow even sadder. “I think that would be a good idea. I think it would be for the best.”

“Are you all right?” Balthazar said cautiously.

Peter turned his head to look at him, then, and he smiled crookedly in a way that was achingly familiar, the kind of expression Balthazar knew so well the memory of it felt imprinted beneath his very skin.

“Better than I’ve been in a long while, I’d reckon,” he said. He left it at that, but warmth curled itself into the pit of Balthazar’s stomach and diffused outward until he could feel it in his lungs, his fingertips. The sight of Peter’s happiness, when it was true, made Balthazar happy. That, at least, had not changed.


	7. Part IV part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They always talk about how the ocean sounds, or how it looks or even how it smells,” Peter said. “They never say a thing about how it feels.”
> 
> “And how does it feel?” Balthazar said before he could stop himself.
> 
> Peter’s gaze flickered briefly toward him. “Like a home I’ve never known,” he said.

_ii._

Going to normal shops among normal people, or walking down normal streets, or sitting alone in a normal restaurant always left Balthazar feeling a little out of place.

On a logical level, he knew that in his gray coat and his sensible shoes, no one could tell a thing about him. He’d been out in the real world, the world outside the Fields and the Cottages and all the recovery centers he’d ever worked at, long enough to know the proper way to carry himself. People could brush up against him, or see the title of a book he was reading or take note of the coffee he was drinking, and not think anything out of the ordinary about him. And he supposed he felt the same way about them, too, how he couldn’t even to begin to guess at the lives and experiences behind the blur of faces that surrounded him.

And yet it was no stretch at all, really, to imagine their anonymous faces distorting with disgust, surrounding him with shame, if they knew what he was, what he was a part of.

Most of the time, he just tried to ignore his thoughts about it. Most of the time, he tried to ignore his discomfort and to ignore that there was a permanent divide between _him_ and _them_ that most people couldn’t even feel as profoundly as he could.

Sometimes, though, he couldn’t. Sometimes, when he was buying himself some milk or perusing disposable cameras he could buy for Ursula, he noticed things. A middle-aged woman telling her friend about an upcoming medical procedure for her ailing husband, or headlines about new healthcare breakthroughs blazing across tabloids without any mention of where those breakthroughs came from.

Balthazar knew. That was his existence right there, unspoken between the finely printed lines. That was what he helped bring about and what he had always been meant to be a part of, since before he was even born.

“We’re people, too,” he burst out once to Ursula in a fit of frustration he should have been able to suppress. “Aren’t we?”

She did not answer, only looked at him with sorrow in her eyes.

They would never have dared to say something like that when they were younger, would never have dreamed about claiming a word like that for themselves. Well, maybe he’d learned a thing or two since back then, when they were alone and confused and didn’t know what it was like to live in the outside world, among people who hadn’t had to live their lives in government homes that would never be the kind of homes they wrote about in books, who had real parents and real children and real families, who never even had to think about saying things like “real people too” because it was that obvious to them. Or maybe he hadn’t learned anything at all.

“No one ever asks _why_ ,” he said to Ursula. He didn’t know why this had suddenly become so important to him. Maybe it was because he’d spent so much time lately remembering. He’d never asked why back then. He figured now that maybe he should have. Maybe they deserved for him to ask why.

“Because that’s not the right question to be asking,” Ursula said.

He raised his eyebrows at her, beseeching her to go on.

“You should be asking how,” she said, leaning her head back against her pillows and closing her eyes. “How we can live with this, and ourselves. How we can stop regretting things, because we only have a few years to properly live anyway, and there’s no space in that time for regret. How we can _live_.”

Balthazar didn’t know how to live without regret. Regret was in his blood. Regret was what he breathed in and out every single day.

“You shouldn’t regret a thing, Balthazar,” Ursula said. “The people you’ve known wouldn’t have been the same without you. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

He didn’t know if he could believe her, didn’t know if he’d changed people at all, or if he’d changed them irrevocably for the worse, but it was different to try to convince yourself of that than it was to hear it from someone else.

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to go away from here?” he said, mind racing. “To just drive down a road and go as far as you can? Or do you ever wonder if you could leave the country?”

“What’s stopping you?” Ursula said quietly.

“I can’t…”

“You could,” Ursula said.

“I can’t leave you,” Balthazar said.

“Then don’t,” Ursula answered, and smiled weakly.

“You make it sound so simple,” Balthazar said.

But maybe it was. Maybe it was that simple.

-

It took longer than Balthazar expected to get the trip to the shore going. Mostly what they had a problem with, he gathered, was that it was a trip that served no real purpose. Carers didn’t usually take their patients out for leisure trips. That just didn’t happen.

As much as Balthazar would have liked to be the one to make it happen, some tasks were beyond his power. After some careful planning and discussion with John, then, he scheduled some tests for John in a center near the coast. The fresh air would do his patient some good, he argued, and might even strengthen him enough to do well during his second donation. They were weak excuses, he knew, but whatever powers above existed had so many patients to worry about they probably couldn’t afford to be picky. And anyway, there had never been any regulations on what a carer could do with their patient after they had their tests done. The trip was granted.

Allowing Peter to come along seemed almost impossible, all the way until about a week before the planned trip. Peter had some planned tests as well, not at the same center but at a nearby one, and at the last minute his carer couldn’t make it. For extra payment, any carer could pick up the trip, and Balthazar was immensely fortunate that he was in the center the day that announcement was made.

At last, all the arrangements were made, and on the day of, Peter and Balthazar helped John down to Balthazar’s car. It was only one flight of stairs, but when they got to the bottom John was already winded. Balthazar carefully buckled him into the backseat, and he and Peter climbed into the front. Then, they were off.

“I used to be the good driver,” Peter said, once they were properly on the road. “This role reversal is unsettling.”

“Peter, I can tell you with confidence that you were never the good driver,” Balthazar said.

“That is, frankly, an offensive statement,” Peter said, pulling his face into an exaggerated grimace of pain. “You aren’t that bad, though. Really. I’m sort of surprised.”

“I think I should be the offended one,” Balthazar said with a short laugh. “What do you think, John? Back me up here.” But when he looked back using the rear view mirror, it was obvious that John had already fallen asleep, his head leaning lightly against the window.

“What is with this man and sleeping in the backs of cars?” Peter muttered under his breath.

Balthazar didn’t know how the air in the car felt to Peter after that statement, but to him it felt frozen. It was the first real reference Peter had made to a shared past.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…” Peter started. He must have seen the expression on Balthazar’s face.

Balthazar only shook his head, and decided to change the subject. “You’ve never been to the sea, have you, Peter?” he asked.

“No. I was beginning to think I’d never be able to.” Peter leaned his head back against the seat. “I suppose I must be lucky we met each other again.”

“I wouldn’t say it was lucky,” Balthazar said, before he could stop himself.

Peter didn’t answer for a few seconds. Balthazar could almost sense him frowning.

“Why’s that?” His voice was uncharacteristically smooth, free of emotion. It must have taken him a lot of practice to perfect the illusion of impassivity. Balthazar knew from personal experience.

“Because…” Balthazar sighed, tightening his grip on the wheel. “Because, whenever I imagined us meeting again – well. I tried not to pretend to myself it would ever happen. I was foolish, when I was younger. But whenever I did, I always thought it would be when we were both still carers, or even when we both became donors. Equals. Or something.”

The words felt silly leaving his mouth, and yet it was how he felt. He was slowly getting used to telling the truth, even if it made him feel ridiculous.

“Oh.”

“I never imagined I’d last longer than you,” Balthazar said, half-jokingly. “You were always so good at everything you did.”

“I don’t know.” Peter shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not that surprised.”

“Really?” Balthazar raised an eyebrow. “And why’s that?”

“I mean, I don’t know if I was ever that good at things,” Peter said. “I was just good at pretending.”

Balthazar suppressed a wince, at that. “Peter…”

“And,” Peter continued, “I always figured you’d be a natural. I mean, you’ve always been so – you’ve always put other people’s needs above your own.”

“I don’t know if that’s always a good thing.”

“It’s the best thing,” Peter said, surprisingly forcefully. “Doesn’t that make you selfless?”

“No,” Balthazar said, quietly but just as firmly. “I think that just makes me scared.”

“Of what?” Peter’s tone was incredulous.

“Of how I feel.”

That seemed to render Peter speechless, for the briefest of moments. He opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked out the window.

“You’re a good person,” Peter said finally. “No matter how much you don’t want to believe it.”

How could Peter know that, though? How could Peter say that after everything that had happened between them?

“There’s no such thing as good or bad people,” Balthazar said. “Not when it comes to people like us.”

Peter closed his eyes. There was pain in them, right before his eyelids shut, and in that moment Balthazar wanted, more than anything, to be the one to make it go away. But he could never be that person, _would_ never be that person, so he kept his eyes on the road, and waited for Peter to speak.

“You know,” Peter said, “you’ve always said that. ‘People like us’. Like we’re different from all the other people. But you know something, Balthazar? I’m not sure we were ever really that different from them to begin with. I think that’s just what they want us to think.”

They mostly left it at that because Balthazar was about to pull into the first center’s parking lot. Still, Peter’s words echoed throughout his mind as he checked John in and sat next to Peter silently in the waiting room. He didn’t understand, couldn’t begin to try to understand.

But it occurred to him, at some point, that maybe he hadn’t actually believed it, not all the times he’d ever said or thought it. Maybe thinking he believed it just made it easier to deal with the fact that there was a huge part of the world, larger than he could even conceive, that would never have to know what it was like to care for someone who was a donor – to care for them despite the fact that their existence had a deadline that was far sooner than it probably should have been were it not for the circumstances, and to do it while knowing you had a deadline on your own existence, that you were just the same as them and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it – and he would never know what it was like to be part of that world.

They made it through the tests in record timing. The doctors told Balthazar that John’s results were even better than they had hoped, which boded well for his impending donation. Then it was off to the other center for Peter’s tests. They weren’t supposed to take more than half an hour, Peter had assured them, and he insisted they stay in the car. Balthazar watched Peter’s back as he disappeared into the center.

“What do you think of him?” John said, behind him.

“I don’t,” Balthazar said, staring forward at the door that had closed behind Peter.

“I thought you were past lying.”

“I shouldn’t,” he amended.

“Well, that’s not true, either.”

“And why’s that?”

John didn’t answer. The question hung in the air until Peter came back out again, rubbing at his arm and good-naturedly complaining about the needles and the tests when he got into the car.

At last, they were on the way to the beach. Something quivering in Balthazar’s heart was worried. They had thought of the ocean since they were young boys, had dreamed of it incessantly. But what if it wasn’t like what they’d imagined in the wildest of their hopes? What if it wasn’t like that at all?

And what if it did live up to their expectations? What would happen, when they had to leave?

Balthazar pulled into an empty parking lot, connected to the beach by a wooden walkway. The dunes were too high for them to see anything of the ocean yet, but when they got out of the car they could hear the sound of it, hushed and distant but there.

Balthazar and Peter helped John out of the car, one person at each elbow as they made their way to the walkway. The going was slow, but Balthazar couldn’t find it in himself to mind. They had all waited long enough; what difference did a few more minutes make?

One step, there was nothing, and the next, the ocean opened up in front of them. A few steps later, they all walked on sand for the first time.

Peter staggered forward, back straight, and before Balthazar knew it the other man had burst into a sprint toward the waves. He let out a wild whoop behind him. Balthazar watched as he ran to the edge of the water and flung his arms wide on either side of him. He was too far away for Balthazar to discern his expression or any part of his demeanor, but he could imagine it. He could imagine it far too well.

“I am not doing that,” John said, almost petulantly.

“Good thinking,” Balthazar replied. They continued toward the edge of the water and, when John tugged at his sleeve, sat on the sand at a safe distance away from it. Seeing the waves like that, their power so close, filled Balthazar with a quiet sort of awe. They could easily sweep him away, if he let them. And yet when they receded from the shore, the sight and sound of them were almost gentle.

Peter approached them, chest rising and falling heavily. He sat down next to Balthazar, one arm curled around a bent knee, the other leaning back in the sand. He turned his face toward the sun, veiled by thin clouds, and smiled.

“They always talk about how the ocean sounds, or how it looks or even how it smells,” Peter said. “They never say a thing about how it feels.”

“And how does it feel?” Balthazar said before he could stop himself.

Peter’s gaze flickered briefly toward him. “Like a home I’ve never known,” he said.

Balthazar’s heart clenched, briefly and painfully.

“Fancy yourself a poet, now?” John spoke up.

Peter looked down, laughing quietly to himself. “Not a good one, no,” he said. “I find myself reading it a lot more now, though, and yeah, sometimes I write it. It’s quite terrible when I go for it – you were always the lyricist, Balthazar, not me – but it’s… You know, it’s something to fill the time up with. Not much to do when you’re stuck in a hospital room all the time, is there?”

“It’s a good metaphor,” Balthazar said. “Could work on delivery, though.”

Peter snorted. “And how might you suggest I deliver it differently?”

“You could always sing it. That’s what I – “ Balthazar’s voice faltered, though he had meant to joke. “That’s what I used to do.”

He could feel Peter looking at him, but he found it nearly impossible to look up from his hands. He reached out and threaded through the sand with his fingers, finding the coolness of the grains soothing against his skin.

“I can’t believe we’re finally here,” Balthazar said.

No one answered, because they didn’t have to. He knew they understood what he meant.

“How do you guys feel?” He asked. There was sand under his fingernails, now, but he didn’t mind. He quite liked the gritty feeling, actually, little bits of the shore getting stuck under his skin, never quite letting go.

Peter’s eyes flickered toward him. “How do _you_ feel?”

How did he feel about the ocean? It wasn’t a bad question to be asking. Leave it to Peter, of course, to be the only one who would think of asking him that.

He didn’t quite know how he felt, honestly. It wasn’t something he could put into words. How did you speak about a place that you had dreamed of your whole childhood, your whole existence, even, a place that you’d promised to others and was promised to you? How did you speak of a place you’d never been able to imagine, to conceptualize how vast and how nameless it was, had only hoped to be able to hold in your heart, one day, among all the other things you’d wanted and gotten? How did you speak about a place that had come to symbolize all the dreams you barely dared to believe in?

How did you speak of a place that turned out to be everything you had ever hoped and dreamed and wished for, and none of it all at once?

“I didn’t expect it, I don’t think,” he said. “How peaceful it was. The ocean is never silent, but I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’d go mad if it went still.”

“I dunno,” John said. “You say it’s peaceful. I say it’s rather distracting. I couldn’t live here if all I ever heard was _noise_.”

“I think I could,” Peter said. “If you got sick of the noise you could just buy ear plugs.”

“I feel like that’s sort of ruining the point, almost,” John mused.

“What’s the point of living by the sea? Other than it’s a fucking dream.”

“You see, I don’t think I would get sick of the noise, really,” Balthazar said. “It’s lulling. Rhythmic. It’s like the whole ocean is singing a song. Maybe I just want to keep on listening. And maybe that’s the point.”

They sat there and talked meanderingly for a while. Eventually, Balthazar spoke less and was just content to listen, to the words around him and to the sound of the tide. If they were younger, maybe, this would be different. Maybe they’d run around like they used to when they were boys, splash into the cold water and vow never to return to the land. It felt right, though, that it was like this. After all this time, after all the silence, this was the only way it could be.

They settled into a comfortable sort of quiet, after a while. Sometimes, a bird flew over their heads, and Balthazar would crane his neck back and watch as it flew in low and lazy circles. The song of the ocean beat endlessly against the sand.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that Peter was the one who broke the silence. It was usually him, after all, especially at times like this. He plunged his hand into the sand, burrowing it down as far as he had the patience to, and after he tired of that he turned to John.

“This was a good idea,” he said. “You’re right that we always used to talk about this. It’s good to actually do something like this. You know, before we can’t anymore.”

John was silent for a few moments. Balthazar could hear his breathing, slow but somewhat labored.

“It’s not the only reason I asked us to come out here, though,” he said.

“Really?” Peter said, surprise clear in his voice. “And why – “

John cut him off with a deep, long sigh. “There are things that I’ve been holding in for a very long time now, things that concern all of us. Years, even. And I think I’ve kept them to myself for too long. It’s been… Far too long. And I owe this to you.”

“John, I don’t think you owe us anything,” Peter said, shifting in discomfort. “I could speak to my own – I mean, I haven’t been the best – “

“You’re so obsessed with what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mean, especially in relation to yourself,” John said wearily. “It’s frankly ridiculous, sometimes.”

Peter fell silent. There was tension in his shoulders, now. Balthazar could feel it.

“Even so, I can’t say that I’m a good person, exactly,” John continued. His voice was dispassionate, as if he was reading an encyclopedia article. It sent chills down Balthazar’s spine to hear him speak like that. “I’m bitter, and vindictive, and I hold all the wrongs other people have done to me inside so that it can fester. I do that willingly. I’ve hurt people. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

“John – “ Balthazar started.

“I’ve hurt you. I’ve hurt you both.”

“John, what do you mean?” Balthazar said, confusion sending his pulse racing.

John closed his eyes, and took in a deep, long breath. Something flashed across his face for a moment, so quickly Balthazar couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Was it pain? Was it frustration? Was it something else entirely?

“I kept us apart.” He shook his head. “More than that, I kept you apart, when I knew you loved each other, and when you needed so desperately the help of someone who could see that to bring you together. I’ve done a lot of bad things, but I just want you to know that this was the worst thing I ever did, and that I know that more than anything else.”

The sound of the waves breaking upon the shore was not enough to ward off the silence that threatened to suffocate Balthazar’s mind. Because it was silent in his thoughts, now. He did not think, could not, and so he could not bring himself to speak a word in answer. What was there to say to something like that, something he would have spent the rest of time denying, something he knew was as true as his own existence?

“How?” Peter’s voice trembled, with sadness or anger Balthazar did not know.

“I could have forgiven you easily, Peter,” John said. “I could have made the effort myself to reconcile whatever space had grown between us. It wasn’t entirely your fault, you know, as much as you like to think that. Or I could have just dropped the whole business and made my own friends. But I knew that as long as I could not fix things between us, and as long as Balthazar could, Balthazar would never be able to fully accept your attachment to him. It was easier than it should have been to make the two of you think the way I wanted you to. All I had to do was interact with you a certain way, say things at a certain time, insinuate I wanted to reconcile, show to Balthazar that I didn’t… Breaking the ukulele was a master stroke of luck. I didn’t plan on it, not originally, but it was a good way to send things over the edge, wasn’t it?”

Perhaps what was even worse than the terrible things John was saying was the way in which he said them. Balthazar had never heard a voice so cold, that could so easily freeze his insides.

“Why?” Balthazar said. He surprised himself with how calm he sounded. He shouldn’t sound calm. He should sound like a hurricane.

“Because you abandoned me, Peter,” John said, and finally emotion broke through in his voice. It was anger; it was loss. It was hurt, the kind you buried so deep and for so long when it came out of you it hurt everyone else just as badly. “You abandoned me when I needed you the most. You abandoned me _twice_. And I wanted you to feel as alone as I did. It seemed like you didn’t care anymore. I wanted to _make_ you care, and I wanted you to care when it was too late to do anything about it.”

Balthazar wished, more than anything, that he was not here in this moment. This felt like a conversation he shouldn’t have been a part of. He could feel the tension between John and Peter like it was his own. He felt it so strongly he felt nauseous. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be anywhere.

“So if I wronged you so badly,” Peter said, a rumble of frustration low in his voice, “why are you telling us now? What does it matter, that we used to – “ He broke off, running a hand through his hair agitatedly.

 _Used to_. The words stabbed through Balthazar’s heart, chewing at his pulse mercilessly.

“I’m sorry, John, I’m so sorry,” Peter said, his voice raw. “I could tell you that a hundred times over and it wouldn’t be enough. But why? Isn’t it – too – “

John smiled then, sadly. “I know it is.”

“Then _why_?” Peter said angrily.

John exhaled. “A month or two ago, I was told that a man named Stanley J was to be my new carer. I did not know if it was the Balthazar I knew. I hoped, though. And when he – Balthazar, when you walked into my room, I was happier than I expected to see you again. But seeing you like that… Seeing you so empty, so totally enslaved to your work… I knew, then, that what I had not done had not been worth the pain it caused. I had meant to hurt Peter, that much is true. But I never meant to hurt you, Balthazar. If you don’t believe another word that I say, believe that, at least.”

Balthazar’s head hurt. There was a heat behind his eyes he couldn’t quite blink away.

“You know that’s not enough, John,” he said. “It’s not enough to say you didn’t want to hurt me. What you did is bad on its own. I know Peter hurt you, too, but – neither of you should forget that for my sake. That’s all I ask.”

Peter blinked at him, eyes wide with shock.

John, on his part, didn’t seem surprised in the slightest. “I knew you would say something like that,” he said with a sigh. “And you’re right. Of course you are. None of it was worth it, in the end. It didn’t change a thing. I was alone before, but when you left, I was even more so. I didn’t learn a damned thing.”

The thing was, he didn’t seem hurt to say something like that. He didn’t even seem all that bothered. He was very matter of fact, all business-like. Balthazar didn’t know, honestly, if it would be worse for him not to sound that way. He didn’t know what he felt, about anything, at all.

“So what’s the point of telling all of this to us now, then?” Peter said, half-heartedly demanding. “If it’s really too – if you didn’t learn anything?”

“I suppose, in some naïve way, I thought I could fix things.” John laughed humorlessly. “Though I don’t really know if I ever really believed that. But I felt, at least, that I should try, for all the things I’ve stolen from you. Your _music_ , Balthazar. I even took that away from you.”

“It’s fine,” Balthazar said automatically, emptily.

“No, it’s clearly not,” John said without skipping a beat. “So anyway, back when I was a carer, I had a friend. Cora. Fairly high up, not so high that she didn’t have to interact with clones, but high enough that she could pull strings when I needed them pulled. So I asked her, as one last favor, to have Peter transferred to Messina. It was probably the hardest task I ever asked of her, and she’s probably still angry at me for it, but she pulled through. It was worth it.”

“So what?” Misery seeped into Peter’s voice, so prominent Balthazar’s heart ached.

“So,” John said, leaning back on his hands, “I figured, whatever time you have left, it would be good to spend together. If you so choose, anyway. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? How much choice you have about it? I know it’s not nearly enough to make up for what time you’ve lost – what time I’ve made you lose – and I understand if you will never forgive me. But it’s the best I can do for you. I hope you can recognize that, at least.”

He trailed off, and after that none of them said anything for a long while. Balthazar was afraid to, because he knew that if he started talking, he would never be able to stop, and at a time like this, that was dangerous.

“It’s getting dark,” John said. “We should head back soon.”

They made their way back to the car and drove back to Messina in abject silence. Peter turned his face toward the window and did not look at Balthazar the whole ride back. Balthazar could only guess at what his face looked like.

Peter helped Balthazar get John into bed. After the kind of day they’d had, John looked exhausted, and he curled up on his side as soon as they turned off the lights. Without waiting for Peter to ask him, Balthazar walked him up to his room. When they stopped outside his door and Balthazar turned to leave, Peter cleared his throat.

“Um, can we talk in here for a minute?” he said, shifting from foot to foot.

Balthazar rubbed at his eyes. He was tired, too. He was more tired than he could say.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, sure.”

Despite the exhaustion beating a dull rhythm into his head, Balthazar did not sit down. Peter stood in front of him, looking at him, refusing to look away. He looked back, not because he wanted to, but because he felt like he had to.

“It’s been a long day, hasn’t it,” Peter said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.

“You don’t have to pity me,” Balthazar said.

“I’m not.”

“Then why are we talking?” Balthazar said, suddenly and inexplicably miserable, the feeling of it thick in his throat. “Why are you even trying?”

“Because I have to.” Peter’s gaze was searing, almost impossible to meet. “Because I just do.”

“Why?”

“Because I still care about you,” Peter said, the force of the truth blazing in his eyes. “Whether you want to believe it or not. Whether you want to _let_ me or not. And I can’t stand the fact that we’re here, in this room, and I can see in your eyes that you stopped even pretending to believe that a long time ago. It’s never not been true. I know I’ve been shit at showing it, but – “

He broke off suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, like he had just burned himself. For a brief, wild moment, Balthazar forgot how to breathe.

“You’re doing it again.” Peter sounded almost accusatory.

“Doing what?” His own voice grated against his ears.

“You’re burying what you feel about this, so you can say that you’re fine and leave this conversation and pretend you forgot it ever happened.” Peter’s eyes became unbearably soft. “Don’t think I don’t know what you do. You’ve done it too many times for me not to know.”

“You think you know me, then?” Balthazar said weakly. “You think I haven’t changed this whole time?”

“No one can know you better than yourself, Balthazar,” Peter said. “But I know you better than most. And I know you feel the same about me. Or, at least, I know that now.”

“It can’t just be John,” Balthazar blurted.

Peter tilted his head, a question in his eyes.

“I mean – “ Balthazar took in a deep breath. “Someone telling us how we feel isn’t the solution to our problems.”

“No.” Peter’s voice was somber. “But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? We might not ever find it, but we have to try.”

He reached out and carefully laid his hand on Balthazar’s face, his thumb grazing his cheek so lightly he could barely feel it. The touch was so gentle, and the look on his face so tender, Balthazar felt himself suddenly on the verge of tears. The curve of Peter’s palm fitted against Balthazar’s cheekbone perfectly, like they had been made for each other; the instinct to lean into the touch was overwhelmingly powerful.

“This isn’t fair,” he said. It was about all he could say, really.

Peter tilted his head to the side. There was sorrow in his eyes, and there was another feeling there, one Balthazar didn’t dare identify, because it would hurt too much if he put a name on it. He didn’t speak.

Balthazar pulled away from the touch, then. He had to. Every cell in his body was telling him not to. He _had_ to.

Peter let his arm fall to his side. He didn’t look angry, or frustrated. He looked like he knew this was how it was going to end, like he’d known it all along. He looked resigned, and tired.

“I should get to bed now,” he said. “And you should drive home. You’re already going to get back late.”

Balthazar left the room and said nothing more. He got into his car and drove to his flat, and when he got into bed he fell asleep almost instantly, and did not dream.

Things went on after that, as normally as they could. Balthazar stopped by Messina twice or three times a week to see John. Sometimes Peter was in the room, and sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t. He didn’t know what John expected to change. It felt like nothing had changed at all.

Except that wasn’t true, either. Something _had_ changed, somewhere inside him. He just didn’t know what it was.

Something else changed, too. John changed. A month before the date of his donation, he began to suggest that Balthazar become Peter’s carer.

The hints were subtle enough, but Balthazar wasn’t an idiot. He knew what John meant by “How lonely do you think Peter is, these days?” and “how easy is it for you to become the carer of someone who already has a carer?” As John’s donation approached, he became increasingly aggressive about pushing for it until, on the night before the operation, John turned to Balthazar in a fit of frustration and said, “Why don’t you become Peter’s carer?”

Balthazar rubbed his eyes. “You know, it’s not as easy as just – “

“I bet _you_ could do it,” John said accusingly. “It’s not impossible. So stop making excuses. There’s another reason.”

“And what, pray tell, might that be?”

“You’re constantly trying to figure out if it’s the right or the wrong thing to do,” John said, his gaze steady. “It’s the biggest conflict you have with yourself. You are so obsessed with right or wrong, it sickens me sometimes.”

“I…” It wasn’t just that, he wanted to say. He couldn’t just become someone’s carer when they already had a carer. Not to mention he already had a patient in the same center. It just wouldn’t be ethical.

But some part of him, deep inside, knew that John was right. He was just making up excuses.

The truth was, he’d spent so much time giving a damn about Peter when he probably shouldn’t have, and so much time being at odds with him, that he couldn’t imagine ever reaching a point in their relationship without all of that hanging over them. The truth was, he had hurt Peter, and Peter had hurt him, and he wasn’t sure if he was prepared to add more to that pain, as would inevitably happen if they saw each other regularly again, and it made him sad that he knew that was an inevitability. The truth was that time was running out quickly, for all of them, and he couldn’t be sure if it was enough, or if it was worth salvaging what little they had left.

The truth, at its very core, was that he was scared. As he had always been, when it came to Peter.

“Balthazar,” John said, more gently now, “Right or wrong doesn’t just matter on a wide scale, you know? If something is right or wrong for you, that’s just as important.”

Balthazar did not answer. Was it really the right thing for him, even, to become Peter’s carer? He couldn’t know.

“Just think about it, okay?” John said, leaning back against his pillows. “So I don’t have to do it for you. Who knows how much time I have left for that, anyway?”

The statement felt chillingly prophetic, but Balthazar deigned not to comment on that, either, and instead steered the conversation in a different direction. In his business, thinking and worrying about the future in those terms was pointless.

When Balthazar came in the next day, John had already undergone the operation. An entourage of orderlies circled around his door, going in and out, communicating with each other in tense whispers. Immediately, Balthazar had the impression that they did not think John was going to make it. From past experience, more often than not their instincts were right.

Typically, in this sort of situation, Balthazar sat with his patient until their completion. Most of the time, patients in this state were too far gone to actually comprehend anything that was happening around them. But he liked to think that, if they could, they would appreciate his company.

He sat next to John until the end, even as all the nurses came in and out to tend to him. And, at some point in those long hours, he knew what he had to do.

After it was all over, he walked out of John’s old room, steps heavy. He went to the secretary’s desk and signed the appropriate papers. Then he made his way up the stairs, down a hallway he knew better than he should. He walked, his feet almost moving of their own accord, and when he got to the door he wanted, he knocked. The sound of his fist against the wood was hollow.

Peter answered the door with silence and an appraising look.

“Can I come in?” Balthazar said.

“Always,” Peter answered, and looked away in brief embarrassment before stepping aside.

Balthazar went to the window, palms pressing against the glass.

“John had his second donation this morning,” he said quietly, his breath misting against the surface of the window. “Completed about half an hour ago.”

“Oh.”

“I have an open spot now,” Balthazar said. “John was always insisting that – well, he always said you should be the one to take it.”

There was no answer. Balthazar plowed forward, talking because he had to, and because it was the only thing he could think to do.

“And I was wondering – I mean, I told you already, but I figured I should ask again – “

A hand rested upon his shoulder, tugging gently. Balthazar turned around, and Peter was close, closer than he had anticipated. His face was solemn, his breath so close Balthazar could feel it against his skin. The question in Peter’s eyes wasn’t one that could be asked or answered out loud, but Balthazar knew what it was and what his answer would be anyway. The air between them, that they were sharing, felt shatteringly breakable. Balthazar wanted, suddenly, more than anything else in the world, to break it.

“Are you okay?” Peter said, his mouth inches away from Balthazar’s.

“Are you?” Balthazar whispered back.

Peter’s laugh came out in hushed breaths Balthazar could feel against his lips. “I asked you first.”

He felt himself nod, instinctively, and when Peter leaned in, that felt like an instinct too.

This was a moment, Balthazar knew, that he had never admitted to himself he spent hours imagining, constructing in the darkest depths of his imagination, his most buried dreams. And yet, now that it was actually happening, he didn’t feel the way he’d expected. He didn’t really know how he felt, honestly. Was he supposed to think “finally”, or was he supposed to think “too late”?

Peter pulled away, his hand still resting lightly on Balthazar’s shoulder. The look in his eyes now was so tender, so full of feeling and love Balthazar almost couldn’t take it.

“Balthazar,” Peter said, carefully, like the words were glass in his mouth, “I would never say no to you.”

This didn’t fix anything, nor was it going to, not on its own. But it was a small comfort, a bit of emotional support they could give each other, and they’d grown up in a world that found comfort unfamiliar.

As Balthazar had anticipated, it took a long while to work out becoming Peter’s carer. When the paperwork was finalized, Peter had already undergone his third donation. It was practically impossible, in those days, not to keep count.

On his first day of caring for Peter, they spent most of the day talking. Peter let Balthazar climb into bed with him, and Balthazar leaned against the warm solidity of Peter’s body for hours under the sheets. Peter’s arm wrapped around him was a comfort he couldn’t say no to. It wasn’t exactly per regulation for a carer to cuddle with their patient, but they’d already stopped caring so much about the rules a long time ago.

“So I’m guessing John wasn’t assigned to you as a patient, was he,” Peter said. Balthazar could feel his breath stirring his hair gently.

“No, I don’t suppose so. Though he’s not the first they’ve let me choose.”

Peter hummed tunelessly in response. Casually, he lifted his hand and tangled his fingers in Balthazar’s hair, thumb brushing against the nape of his neck.

“You know, funny thing is, it was actually a run-in with Beatrice that really pushed me into it,” Balthazar said. “I guess I’d thought about it before then, too, but she was the one who brought the idea to the front of my mind.”

“Yeah?” Peter said, mild surprise in his voice.

“She was also the one who told me you started going by Peter again,” Balthazar said. “After I left.”

“Did she.” Peter’s thumb began to move across the back of Balthazar’s neck, slowly and rhythmically. Balthazar suppressed the urge to shiver.

“I guess I was – “ Balthazar shook his head. “I was just wondering why. I mean, obviously, it’s fine, but why?”

Balthazar could feel a slight shift in Peter’s demeanor. “I don’t know. There was a lot going on at the time. It’s hard to remember what exactly was going on in my head.”

Balthazar did not answer. He wondered if waiting would actually do anything, if Peter would get over whatever it was that was holding him back and just say what he was thinking. Then he felt ashamed for the thought, because what right did he, of all people, have to judge something like that?

“I guess that what it was, or at least part of it,” Peter said, slowly, “was that when you left, it hit me, all of a sudden, how old we’d gotten. I don’t suppose it occurred to me before then that we weren’t children anymore, but suddenly, you weren’t there, and everyone was faced with the impending truth that we’d have to follow you someday. That must be what it was.”

“So what?” Balthazar pressed. “What does that even mean?”

“So at that point, Pedro as a name just didn’t feel right anymore. It felt – well, it felt like a child’s name, really.” Pedro laughed self-deprecatingly. “I don’t know. It felt like I was growing up, or that I had to, and that was the way to do it. Or the way to start doing it, anyway.”

Balthazar nodded. “That makes sense.” But still, he could tell there was more.

“This is really silly, but…” Peter laughed again. “I think part of me must have hated how much having that name reminded me of you.”

Balthazar’s heart hammered in his chest. “Peter, your name is _yours_. It just – “

“I know, I know, you don’t feel right knowing I associated something like that with you.” Peter sighed. “I understand now, of course, how silly that was. But we were so young, Balthazar, or at least much younger than we are now. I didn’t stop to think about how silly it was at the time. I couldn’t, not when it hurt so much.”

“What hurt?” Balthazar almost hated himself for sounding so small.

“You not being there anymore.” Peter’s voice was so matter of fact. “And for all I knew, I was never going to see you again. That hurt more than anything.”

Balthazar couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“And I think it was because you were always there, you know?” Peter continued. “Ever since we were small boys, you were there. I didn’t realize how much I’d taken that for granted until you were gone. I shouldn’t have. I should never have taken you for granted. I should have appreciated every last second we had together. I know that now.”

“To be fair,” Balthazar said, “It’s not like I made it that easy to appreciate me.”

“I suppose we did fight a lot, yeah,” Peter mused. “Maybe if we’d actually been able to conceptualize how little time we’d have, we wouldn’t have found so many reasons to get at each other like that. Maybe we would have – “

Peter cut himself off with a sharp breath. Some things, even now, were too hard to say out loud.

“There’s no point in thinking about things like that now,” Balthazar said, not sure if he even believed the words himself. “They are how they are. We just have to fight through it, like we always do.”

“That’s true.” Peter nudged at him, and when Balthazar looked up, he was grinning crookedly. “Us Fields folk, we’re fighters, aren’t we?”

It was a moment that would stick in Balthazar’s head for many years afterward, words that would echo throughout everything he did and said. But in that moment, all he could think about was the pale light illuminating one side of Peter’s face and the slant of his grin, how a sight like that could take his breath away effortlessly, and how lucky he was to witness it.

They stayed like that for a long while, talking under the sheets. Balthazar found the idea of leaving, as all carers had to eventually, to be more and more difficult to entertain. If he could spend the rest of his existence in Peter’s arms, he thought, he would be content.

But he couldn’t do that, and that thought made him sadder than it should.

“I should head home soon,” Balthazar said, sometime in the night, half-heartedly.

“No,” Peter said. “Stay.”

Balthazar didn’t have the heart to resist him, not this time, not after everything. He moved back into Peter’s embrace, and they kissed, long and soft. They stayed under those sheets for a long time.

After a while, they lay silently in the dark. Balthazar thought about the meaning of “too late”, if it even meant anything anymore. He thought about the fact that Peter had already donated three times, and it was going to be a long while before they announced his fourth donation but that day would come eventually, and no matter what day it was it would always feel too soon. He thought about time, and how he had once been told that it was merely a construct that humans had invented to make themselves feel better, and how the concept of time didn’t make him feel better in the slightest.

He thought about what it was like to kiss Peter, and to be with him like this, and how he couldn’t tell if he felt good about it or bad or nothing at all.

“Balthazar,” Peter said quietly. He was grateful for the sound of Peter’s voice, if only so the darkness wouldn’t swallow him whole.

“Yeah?”

A pause, and a shift in space. “Can I ask you something?”

Balthazar stayed silent.

“Did you...” He could feel a beat of Peter’s pulse under his fingertips, and then another. Peter didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to, because Balthazar knew exactly what he wanted to and couldn’t say.

“I loved you. I always did.”

Growing up, they’d always said that telling the truth lifted a weight off your chest, that honesty would always make you feel lighter, freer, better. They never mentioned that if you held the truth in your heart for long enough, it wouldn’t want to come out, that it would dig itself into the dregs of your heart and scrape against your throat when you tried to drag it out.

He’d thought that saying the words he’d known were true for years, maybe even since he’d met Peter, would set him free. He didn’t prepare for the possibility that it would hurt. But god, it hurt, to say this thing he’d been saving in his chest for what felt like a whole eternity, to know he should have said it so much sooner than now and not have the power to do a thing about it. It hurt more than he thought it could.

He should have known. How many times had telling the truth brought him pain, before now?

There was silence, and darkness.

“And now?” Peter said.

Until those words were spoken, Balthazar had thought he’d reached the limit, that it couldn’t possibly hurt any more this. But he was wrong.

“Don’t ask me that.” Balthazar closed his eyes. “Please.”

He was tired, then. More tired than he remembered ever being. And they didn’t speak anymore, so he slept, and dreamed of a world where he was a younger man and not too scared to say the things that mattered. He dreamed of impossible things. He couldn’t imagine a single world existing out there in which he didn’t feel scared.

In the morning, Balthazar woke up before Peter did. It was a novel sensation. Peter had always had more of an affinity for early mornings than him. It was something about being a carer, probably. He didn’t really want to wake up at that time, but he knew he had to.

He got out of bed and gathered up his clothes. As he was pulling his shirt on over his head, Peter stirred, and blinked at him blearily.

“Where’re you going?” he mumbled.

“I have other patients besides you, you know,” Balthazar said, sitting down on the head so he could put on his socks.

“But you said – “ Peter rubbed at his face. “Yesterday you said you didn’t have to leave until nine.”

“I have other responsibilities.”

“Balthazar,” Peter said, “please don’t run away from me. Not this time.”

Balthazar squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m not.”

He felt a tentative hand on his back. “Aren’t you?” Peter said, almost sadly.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Peter,” Balthazar said, as honestly as he could. “I know I’m just supposed to ignore the fact that you’re a patient, and that you’re not even going to be a patient for much longer, or at least I’m supposed to pretend that that’s normal. But I can’t. Not with you.”

Peter was silent for a bit. Just as Balthazar was about to stand up, he spoke.

“Then don’t.” Balthazar looked back at him, and Peter smiled wanly. “There’s no shame in sadness. But there’s no shame in taking the time we have left and making the most of it, either. Maybe we don’t have enough time. Maybe none of us do. And maybe that’s the point.”

Balthazar let the air out of his lungs.

“You should come back to bed,” Peter said. “If only for a little while.”

Maybe Peter was on to something. Maybe Balthazar _was_ tired of running. He’d done it for as long as he could remember, and what was the point in doing it now when there wasn’t going to be much time left to run from Peter anyway?

He loved Peter. That was true. Even if he couldn’t say it out loud, he could at least say it to himself. Maybe it was time he let himself do it.

So Balthazar got back into bed without protesting this time, and the space next to Peter’s side felt more comfortable than any home he could ever imagine.

Things were different, after that. Things were almost normal, if he really had any concept of what that word meant. Balthazar couldn’t come see Peter every day, but he came as often as he could. He grew rather fond of Peter’s room, despite the lack of balcony. He liked the paleness of the walls, and the beds were more comfortable than his own, back in his flat. He supposed he wouldn’t mind ending up at Messina, when his time came.

And he liked how easy it felt to spend time in Peter’s company. Now that they had everything out in the open, now that everything Balthazar had held in his heart for almost his whole existence was released into the world, he couldn’t imagine a single thing holding them back. They would spend hours in that room, Peter sitting at his desk and scrawling poetry on old scraps of paper, Balthazar flipping through a book lazily. Or they would spend hours outside, enjoying the cool weather, pretending that the sounds of the cars driving by were ocean waves.

They had to make trips sometimes for various tests, and whenever he could Balthazar used it as a chance to bring Peter someplace new. They bought a small cassette player in one of the stores they visited, and a couple of tapes they’d known back when they were at the Cottages, and back at Messina they played the tapes for hours on end, softly so that passing nurses couldn’t hear. Sometimes, Peter took his hand and they would dance, clumsy and feet stumbling to the beat and hands warm in each other’s grips, and Balthazar almost felt seventeen again.

There was a lot of kissing, too, and a lot of lying next to each other under Peter’s sheets, feeling the rhythm of Peter’s breathing under his skin like the beat of a familiar song.

They ate meals together, when they could. Balthazar brought things from the outside when he could – a box of chocolate cookies, a tub of hummus, once a glorious piece of pizza wrapped in a piece of crumpled foil. One happy day, Balthazar brought in a photograph he’d found amidst the clutter of the things in his flat, a photograph from the Cottages of all of them, and Peter ran his fingers gently over the glossy surface, and laid it reverently on his desk.

They lived, and somewhere in the middle of it, they made time to love. Somehow, it worked out.

They always knew, though, that it wasn’t going to last. Even if they didn’t know for sure when the end was going to come, they knew that it would. They never talked about it, not until they had to, but Balthazar on his part always, always felt it.

It was somewhat ironic, then, that Peter received the notice for his donation on a day Balthazar wasn’t there. The next time Balthazar came, he didn’t even realize what was happening at first.

“I’m sorry I’m late today,” he said as he took off his jacket and tossed it on Peter’s chair. “My last patient had some complications – “

“Why do you call us patients?” Peter said abruptly. “Everyone else knows us as donors.”

“Because we’re people too,” Balthazar said. He noticed, then, the set in Peter’s shoulders, and the torn envelope resting on the desk.

“The others treat me with a lot of respect, now,” Peter said.

“When?” It was all Balthazar could get out.

“Four months.” Peter rubbed at his eyes, tiredly. “You don’t have to stay that long, if you don’t want to. I know how hard it’s going to be on you…”

Balthazar sat down on the bed next to Peter, reaching out and taking his hand. “Do you want me to?” he said seriously.

Peter looked up at him, and Balthazar could see the answer in his eyes as clear as day.

“Then I will stay,” he said. “For as long as you want me to.”

Peter surged forward and wrapped him in an embrace, pressing his face into Balthazar’s neck. He felt his arms around him, across his back, tightening. He closed his eyes and let himself be embraced by Peter, engulfed in his warmth. It felt unbearably good to let himself do that, to wrap his arms around Peter’s torso in kind and hug him back as hard as he could, because they’d have to let go of each other, sometime, someday, but this was not that time, and some part of him figured that had to count too.

“Until the end,” Peter whispered into Balthazar’s skin. “If you can, I want you to stay until the end.”

It was different after that, between them. More subdued. Peter wasn’t allowed off Messina grounds, and he always said he didn’t mind it, but Balthazar suspected he did, perhaps more than he could admit even to himself. He started spending more time to himself, huddled over his desk, sometimes angrily writing verses he refused to show Balthazar, sometimes staring out the window and thinking about things Balthazar could not begin to imagine.

In those days they seemed to spend less time talking to each other, not because it was awkward or because they didn’t have things to say, but because they didn’t really need to. They’d already gone through all the important things, it felt like. And sometimes, lying in bed with tangled limbs and hearts beating in tandem was all they needed to feel close to each other.

One rainy afternoon, Peter’s arm curled around him like a parenthesis, Peter said, “I have a poem I want to read you.”

Balthazar looked up at him with interest. “Really, now? Since when did that happen? Who are you, and what have you done with the Peter I know?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Peter said, smiling. “It’s just – it’s not very good, and it’s way too sentimental, but I just – I need to. You understand.”

“Yeah,” Balthazar said, casting his eyes downward. “I understand.”

“All right, so…” Peter cleared his throat. “Here it goes, I guess.”

“Wait, you have it memorized?” Balthazar said, oddly touched.

“Shut up. Okay. All right.” Peter closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “ _How oft when thou, my music, my music play’st_ …”

Balthazar fell quiet. It was startlingly obvious, what – who – the poem was about. The words were hard to follow, but there was a rhythm to them, a subdued sort of power in Peter’s deep voice, that struck a chord deep in his heart.

When Peter finished the poem, they lay in silence. The rain pattered its dance on the windowsill.

“I’m going to miss you,” Balthazar said, and _missing_ was a word that was useless for people like them, but in that moment he no longer cared what was useful or not, because it was what he felt, deep inside himself, and he knew just as deeply that Peter needed to hear it.

“Yeah,” Peter said into his hair, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “I know.”

“I almost wish…” Balthazar trailed off. It wouldn’t be fair for Peter to hear something like that, even if he knew what he wanted to say.

“I know that, too,” Peter said. “But you know you have to keep on existing, right? For as long as you can? You know that’s what you have to do?”

“Yes,” Balthazar said, his eyes on the raindrops outside.

“I miss your music,” Peter said. “It’s something I regret every day, taking that away from you.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Balthazar said. “It wasn’t either of your faults. I couldn’t tell him, but I can tell you that with confidence.”

“Still,” Peter murmured. He rubbed his hand over Balthazar’s arm. “Might you pick it up again, one day?”

For you, I might, Balthazar did not say.

“Maybe,” he said instead. The rain fell on, and they didn’t say much else for the rest of the day.

He didn’t mind the silence. When they were younger, he might have. Back then, it never seemed like they’d said enough. He was a bit older than he’d been back then, though, and he knew now that moving on would never be as easy as he wanted it to be, but he also knew ignoring everything that had happened wasn’t the same as moving on, and he knew what they were doing wasn’t the same as ignoring all the wounds and the hurt between them. They weren’t ignoring anything. They were letting themselves make something better of it together.

And of course he could spend the rest of forever wishing they had more time. He could always wish for more time for as long as he lived, for himself or for all the others he’d known in his time who deserved more time, more chances, just _more_. Wishing had never done a damn thing for him.

Peter didn’t let him think about wishing. Peter made him glad he existed in a moment they could both share. Peter made him glad he was alive.

He could be ridiculously romantic about it, sometimes. He insisted, at some point, that they sit down and write each other letters that they weren’t allowed to read until the very end, respectively for each of them. That afternoon was a long one. Peter spent hours working on Balthazar’s, crossing out lines and rewriting them until finally he had successfully pared it down to three pages. He carefully sealed it in an envelope and gave it to Balthazar. “You’re not allowed to read this for years and years,” Peter said.

“I promise,” Balthazar said, smiling despite himself. “And you have to promise not to read mine when I’m here.”

“Aw, that’s no fun,” Peter complained. “But okay. If you say so, I’ll forego the amazing opportunity to embarrass the hell out of you, for your comfort. That’s pretty important too, I guess.”

Balthazar was glad that Peter didn’t ask him for his reasons. If he did, he’d either have to tell the truth – that he didn’t know if he could do something like cry, and he didn’t want this opportunity to find out, because he didn’t know which answer was worse – or he’d have to lie. He didn’t want to do either.

So in their own small, quiet ways, they got ready for the end, and the days crawled by, days until the very last, except it wasn’t the last for Balthazar, and above all he had to remember that. He still had more days left, and that mattered. In the meantime, he opened his heart to Peter, and he should have done it years sooner, but he didn’t need the list of things he would one day regret to be longer than it already was.

The night before Peter’s last donation came, and Balthazar did not wish for more nights.

All of Peter’s possessions were stacked neatly on the desk, organized meticulously in Balthazar’s absence. Balthazar was supposed to take as many of them with him as possible. When Peter had asked, Balthazar had not said a word about how it was against the rules, let alone how it didn’t matter if he took them now because if they didn’t take them away today, they would take them away someday. He did not say that there would always be a someday. He only smiled, and said, “Of course.”

Now, they lay in Peter’s bed, as they often did. The covers were as warm as they ever were.

“Do you remember, Peter, that night you asked me if I would ever write you a song?” Balthazar said, whispered into the crook of Peter’s neck.

“Yes, I remember that night,” Peter murmured back.

“Do you remember what I said?”

“You said maybe.”

“I was lying. Kind of.”

“Really?” Balthazar’s could feel Peter’s soft laughter rumbling in his chest. “Are you saying you’d never write me a song, then? I’m wounded.”

“No,” Balthazar said. “I’m saying at that point, I already had.”

Silence.

“I think,” Balthazar said, “all the songs I ever wrote were for you.”

A heartbeat passed by. Another.

“You never told me that.” Peter didn’t sound hurt or offended. He just seemed surprised.

“I’m telling you now,” Balthazar said, trying and failing to fight back a smile.

“Well, now I have to hear them, obviously.”

“You can hear one.” Balthazar hesitated. “If you want.”

“Balthazar.” Peter shook at his shoulders a little. “Look at me.”

Balthazar leaned his head slightly back and met Peter’s eyes. Peter’s gaze did not flinch away.

“Is that even a question?” It could have been a harsh thing to say, but Peter’s voice was gentle, and the smile on his face was gentler.

Balthazar closed his eyes. It had been a long time since he’d touched a piano or a ukulele. It had been a long time since he had sung. He was almost afraid that he’d already lost that part of him to the relentless force of eroding memory. And yet as soon as the first words came to mind, he could remember. It had been years, five or six or more since he’d last thought about the song he sang, but he remembered it all.

“It seems about time that these words were spoken…”

When he finished, the room was left in aching silence. Balthazar didn’t want to ask what Peter would say. They were long past shyness, but right then he couldn’t help but be afraid of Peter’s reaction.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wrote it when you still called yourself Pedro, and the rhythm of the name fits it a lot better…”

“Balthazar.”

When Balthazar looked up, Peter kissed him. It was the kind of kiss that said all the words they never could out loud, and Balthazar tried his best to put all the feelings he’d never tell Peter about in it.

They broke apart, as they always did, and Peter pressed his forehead to Balthazar’s, and they lay there and breathed until the rhythms of their breaths lined up together.

“Your voice is more beautiful than I remember,” Peter said, exhaling the words against Balthazar’s lips, and Balthazar did not wish he knew how to tell Peter how much he loved him, because in that exact moment, neither of them needed to say it out loud; they just knew.

The day of Peter’s last donation, it all ended very quickly. The doctors told him not to worry, that the operation was about as painless as it could have been. The paperwork was easy to fill out for a patient who made it to their fourth donation, and he was told to leave Messina before noon.

He went up to Peter’s room one last time, before they cleared everything out. He walked up to the window and looked out over the parking lot, reaching out to touch the glass. In the window’s faint reflection, he could see an opened envelope tucked under the pillow on the bed, an envelope he didn’t think he had the heart to touch again. He felt all the memories he had of that room, a room that was and had always been effectively anonymous, swelling up in his heart like a crescendo. He let it all wash over him, all the whispered conversations, all the unhurried warmth. The hills in the distance were blurred.

Then, with a deep breath, he stepped back from the window, and left the room for wherever it was he was supposed to be.

-

Balthazar, sometimes, looked back on the last almost-three decades of his life, and wondered if it was a life to be regretted.

It seemed almost pointless to think about regret in such a manner. But for someone like him – for any person, he suspected, but especially for a person who had lost as much as he had, even all the things he didn’t have, because not having those things was a loss too, in its own way – it was, he figured, an inevitable train of thought. How could one not regret an existence that depended on losing in the first place?

There was a time, perhaps, when he would have thought the answer to his question was a definitive yes. There might even have been a time when he would have dwelt on it, thought of all the days he could have had and didn’t, all the pain he could have saved others and himself and didn’t.

In those final few weeks and months with Ursula, he asked himself that question even more frequently, silently. Sometimes he dared to sit at the desk in his flat and pull out the things he’d collected from his past donors and arrange them in neat rows in front of him, and he’d wonder.

And he continued to sneak chocolate past the secretaries and into Ursula’s room. And he didn’t stop Ursula from taking pictures of him, and sometimes he even took some himself. And he let himself sit with her, all the opportunities he could, sit there and just soak in the silence, and the memories. And in those times, the moments that stretched between the words they spoke, he thought he finally had his answer.

So the day of Ursula’s final donation arrived, just like every other final day. There was no stopping the inevitable, as Balthazar knew. There was only waiting for it to come.

Ursula asked for Balthazar to be there, and of course he couldn’t say no. He’d never been able to in the past. In the hours leading up to the operation, there was a window of time in which the nurses and orderlies left Ursula alone. Balthazar sat next to Ursula’s bed, and Ursula gave him all the photographs he’d had developed for her.

“Don’t let them throw these away,” Ursula said.

Balthazar nodded. “Of course.”

“Thank you for being my carer,” Ursula said. “Thank you for being my friend.”

Something swelled up in Balthazar’s throat, painfully. “Of course.”

She reached out and took his hand, and smiled.

“Remember me,” she said. _Remember all of us_ , he heard.

Of course, he answered silently. As sure as his heart beat in his chest, he could never forget. And he didn’t want to. Not anymore.

After it was all over, he filled out the paperwork, as usual. He walked down to the parking lot and got into his car and drove back to his flat. He had cleared the whole day’s schedule for the operation, and he had nowhere he needed to be, nowhere he wanted to be except alone in his head. He collected the mail and picked up the newspaper, and when he got inside he made himself a cup of tea and sat at his table with it while flipping through his mail.

“Stanley J”, the top one said. It looked official, white crisp envelope and professional black type. He could guess what it was.

Balthazar got up from the table, leaving the envelope behind unopened, and placed his now empty cup in his sink. On his desk was a cardboard box he’d packed the night before, of all the things he’d kept from years past, with his ukulele leaning against it. Inside the box, there was a small stack of cassette tapes, not from the Cottages, but from years after. There were two worn notebooks, full of scrawled poetry in handwriting that wasn’t his. Tucked inside the cover of one of them was a letter in a yellowing envelope, still unopened. He was grateful for what he had managed to keep, even if it wasn’t everything he’d wanted. And what he had certainly was not a lot, but it was more than what some people ended up with, and for that he was a lucky man.

Slowly, he took the stack of pictures Ursula had given him and placed them carefully in the box. Then, he picked up the box and his ukulele and left the flat. The noise his key made when he locked the door behind him sounded final. He made his way back to his car, placed his possessions in the backseat, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

He wondered how far he could drive before they caught up with him, if they would even care enough to catch up with him. He wondered what would happen to him if they did. He wondered if he cared.

He looked up at the sun, shining weakly through a veil of thin clouds, and wondered if it looked different on the other side of the world. He thought he might like to visit America, one day; he thought maybe Peter would have liked to see that place, too.

If he looked to the passenger seat, he could just imagine Peter sitting next to him, and John sitting behind them in the backseat. Their faces, at this point, were blurred by memory, and he knew if they were actually there they would look different than they had four or five years before. But he could still visualize the outlines of their bodies clearly, and his heart swelled at the thought.

As he put the keys into the ignition, he imagined John asking him why he was doing this. John had always been the one to ask why. Peter wouldn’t ask anything. He’d just look out the window, and dream of different worlds.

Why, indeed. Maybe he’d always had an inclination for running away. Maybe this wasn’t what he was meant to do at all; maybe it was a mistake.

And maybe it was for the same reason why, one day a very long time ago, he had decided the name Balthazar fit him best, and stuck with it for the rest of his life.

He looked down the road he wanted to go down. There was no knowing what waited for him at the end of it, but he figured that was the joy in traveling, ultimately – finding out whatever it was waited for him at the end of the road, or if it just continued on forever across the country. He started the car and began to drive. The specters of his past faded away, and for the first time in a long time, he smiled. Perhaps this was where he had meant to go, all along. ~~~~

~~-~~

_Is it the right word that you designed for me?_ __  
_Is it the broken word or good advice I need?_ __  
_Is the tapestry set beneath my wings?_  
_Is it mysterious, is it glorious? Indeed..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's that. I'm done with this fic. I am finally free. Wow.
> 
> Some housekeeping:
> 
> -The names of this fic's parts are taken from songs off of the "Never Let Me Go" movie's soundtrack. I would also recommend seeing the movie, if you haven't; it's very pretty, and the music is prettier.
> 
> -The quotes that begin each part are from the book itself by Kazuo Ishiguro.
> 
> -Here is [an impromptu playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/strange-towns/playlist/32jW6fPUJJGycmo9PPU90R).
> 
> -One last thank you to everyone who helped me bring this fic into fruition, and thank you to everyone who's stuck with me all this time. Aside from various spinoffs for the [olwy verse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/414798), this will be my last fic for this fandom. Cheers.


End file.
